* * *

  The night, the barely visible lights of the stars, which are not yet hidden behind the clouds, half of the moon peeking out from behind the clouds, which adds charming gre to the water surface, fresh river air, and a noticeable chill that winds under his clothes. The tter was aided by a summoned spirit, which insuted Stepan sufficiently to allow him to walk on deck in his shirt alone. However, he preferred not to walk, but to sit in a comfortable corner at the stern, in the company of Cherz, who was silently smoking a pipe. The ship's magician smoked not tobacco, judging by the smell, but not an analog of hashish, just some other herbal collection, saturated with magical energy, and, if Stepan's Sensitivity did not fail, Cherz prepared and saturated this mixture with power. Well, so it would really be useful for him to incense this stuff. The smell of this collection was very pleasant, sweet, and cherry - if the young man was a smoker, he would have asked to share a pinch or two.

  The quiet and peaceful environment of this night was exactly the same as the previous six. There were no urgent matters, no dreadful deadlines, and no constant development and growth using new approaches to old topics. There was no special opportunity to call, if only for small things, assignments had to be skipped, as well as special purchases in the System Store, and in general, the experience gain expectedly slowed down to almost zero. This should have been annoying and for the first couple of days even irritating, but then Stepan caught a deep meditative calm and peacefulness. The desire to rush, to do, to improve, to redo and go round and round again had not disappeared, still remained with him, but now it was as if the young man remembered how good the simple routine of doing nothing was.

  He sat on a wooden bench, his cloak tucked beneath him, letting the summoned small air spirit drive away the clouds of magic smoke, leaving only a barely discernible note of berry fvor. And he, like Cherl, silently contempting the reality unfolding from new sides, saw no need for words or action. Complete rexation and falling into nirvana, and without any substances unrecommended and illegal pills. The dark walls of the coastal forest and thickets, whose views were already imprinted in the retina, quietly whispered spshing waves, in which it was almost possible to hear the universal secrets, and the developed shamanic spirit was in such peace that if it were a dozen points lower, one could expect to raise it by one.

  Stepan secretly expected that he would quickly get bored and annoyed by the long view of the monotonous ndscape, but nothing of the sort happened. Even on the contrary, to be honest, because with every day and hour, he was becoming more and more at ease with his soul, more and more vividly he understood that even though he would have to return to hard work, - and he would definitely return, wishing it fervently - but only this rest from everything was strongly necessary for him, vital if not for his physical, then for his mental health. Meditative contemption, interspersed only with rare and brief conversations - in which he showed no special interest in conversation - meals, visits to the toilet, and occasional healer's tasks. While earning his free passage, the young man healed several cuts, bruises, a sore tooth, and frostbite, along with the pneumonia of a sailor who had dozed off almost undressed. This confirmed his qualifications and finally broke the ice of distrust between him and the ship's crew, led by Bastius. Even his taciturnity did not surprise anyone, for there was a certain Silent Man in the crew, from whom an average of two or three phrases were heard in a month (and he was often confused with a mute), so that the river voyagers called the passenger-healer temporarily seconded to them, and, of course, behind his back, Not-Silent Man.

  Everything was fine, everything was even a little bit beautiful: the scenery, the people, the occasional coastal fishing vilges, fishing boats, or boats rafting upstream. During these encounters, everyone tensed up and took up arms at the sight of strangers, but parted peacefully. The general mood and even the weather, which was only once pleased with a quick rain. Everything was perfect, but only until tonight, which, frankly speaking, disappointed Stepan. He didn't quite get his bearings at first, but the skills and grasp at once of a specialist agent and a master fighter got him back up and running quickly. A few discreet calls to the spirits that sat in his bracelets and rosary beads, a few more quick calls to the already contracted entities, analyzing the information received from those allies who are always with him in case of betrayal, and then the young man begins to act. Well, not exactly act, but rather hint that it was not him who needed to act.

  "Look, Cherz, aren't there any vilges around now?" Lazy and lost, all lost in himself, he crifies the already known. "There shouldn't be any people around?"

  "No, Pann, it should not, we are now in a remote part of the river, the terrain here is either too hilly or swampy, the nd does not give birth well, and there are also magical beasts, tribes of green too, even if not orcs, so goblins." The zy expnations of the ship's mage are full of compcency, he doesn't see Stepan as a competitor and has already made sure that the guy is a competent and polite interlocutor, who will gdly listen to answers to his questions. "There's no sense for vilgers to settle here, the nd is bad on both sides of the bank, and it's hard to survive. It's the most dangerous part, my friend, that's why I don't sleep. Here, meeting anyone on the water can be a real pain in the ass. Breakwaters, bottom-dwelling assholes, they love this kind of pce."

  The yawning mage, despite his yawning, stares ahead with very clear eyes, occasionally using magic vision. He does not remove his protective amulet in Stepan's presence even after these days. He thinks the young man does not see and does not know the man who knows something about working with ready-made amulets, almost a dozen years older than his young colleague, despite his very youthful appearance, always adjusts his amulets in such a way that they strengthen the hemisphere on the side of their guest. Not that he saw Stepan as a traitor or a murderer, but he showed a healthy paranoia, having already seen more than once how deceptive the behavior of scoundrels and treacherous bastards can be. Frankly speaking, such an unspoken and non-threatening readiness to fight even appealed to the Earthman, winning him with its calm attitude. He liked it on the ship in general, the people here mutually respected each other and very carefully watched their words, because there was no escape from the ship anyway, and you still had to live with these people. Even his things, for the safety of which Stepan feared a lot, having put three yers of protection, of which only one was obvious, no one tried to touch them, as they stood in a dry corner of the hold, so they continued to stand there. Probably because of this mutual sympathy with the ship's crew Stepan did not keep silent now, though the smartest thing would have been to just take his things and jump overboard.

  "Well, then it's clear whose boats are those, loaded with people, hiding in the reeds on either side, half a mile ahead of us." He nods to himself, as if talking about something routine, pointing his finger in the right direction and squinting his eyes suspiciously. "We even hid from the eye, but they didn't think of a defense against the spirits. Are they waiting for us, or don't they care?"

  Cherz hovered involuntarily for a few seconds, blinked like an owl awakened in its nest, reflexively finished puffing the pipe, and then bulged his eyes as if he wanted to turn into an owl, coughing up the smoke and releasing the puff from his mouth and nostrils at the same time. Throwing the pipe on the deck, knocking himself in the sternum, and coughing, he muttered something indistinctly and began to rummage in his belt pockets, taking out some gss and looking through it. At the same time, the moon finally disappeared behind the clouds, and a wave of activity passed through the aura of the magician, who did not forget to strengthen his back with a shield.

  "I can't fucking see, but, uh... it's too smooth, yeah, it's too... Fucking bitch, Pann. You're good, good!" Barely shouting the st phrase, managing to yell it in a low whisper, he unched himself from his seat quickly and decisively, kicking the sentinel group and waking up the captain without shouting or yelling. "Bastius, Bastius, damn you, get up, get up!"

  The recently dormant ship was no longer drowsy. The people on it began to scurry back and forth, not noisily but very busily as if it were a single organism that had been kicked in the balls by someone. The association with a disturbed anthill or even a hornet's nest was involuntary but was very persistent. The men were arming and waking up quickly, putting on light leather jackets or even sleeveless ringlets; shields had already appeared on the deck from somewhere; the elders and Bastius were giving commands in a loud whisper. The Silent One, the same one, was busy putting the bowstring on a short but very stiff battle bow, someone was pulling crossbows from the hold. Stepan, as if temporarily forgotten by everyone, continued to sit on the stern and crunch popcorn, though in fact he was working even harder than the others, sending out his scout spirits, shuffling the elements of the rosary, selecting a team of defenders and attackers for the coming battle.

  He did not doubt that he would have to help in it, not only with healing afterward. When he'd said that the disguise had been weak against the spirits, he'd been understating things a little. It was weak against his spirits, against a well-coordinated pack of bloodhounds, the kind of spirits that could hardly be contracted. But the river breakwaters' camoufge itself was good and respectable. If Cherz hadn't known where to look and hadn't been paranoid enough to prefer waking everyone up for nothing to not waking them up and then getting caught in knives, even his strange lens wouldn't have helped. He had noticed, as Bastius realized from his words, only the strange uniformity of the void of the magical background at the indicated point, not the obvious clue of an impending ambush trap.

  No one ughed or swore at him for being overly cautious, and no one would reproach him for a false arm if it turned out to be false. This was the river, the mighty and cruel Dantra, there was no concept of excessive caution here, and you could get some sleep at lunchtime if you lived to see it. A few minutes ter, as if by magic, the captain and his mage, as well as the first (and only) mate-retive found themselves on the same stern next to Stepan. All three of them were already dressed in protection. All three of them looked stern and worried, though the older men hid their excitement better than Bastius's nephew.

  "If it turns out that there's an ambush waiting, a purse of silver for you, Pann." The captain of the riverboat informs him in passing, though with significance, cing up the fastenings of a heavy, riveted jacket with a high colr, in the pockets of which a couple of already activated amulets lie, protecting him from weak and primitive spells. "And if you're wrong, it happens, don't worry. If there aren't at least five or six false calls to arms on a voyage, it's not even a voyage. But I can feel it in my gut you're not imagining it, the breakwaters, those bastard bastards, are definitely there. And I don't like the fact they've hidden so well. Albeit only from magic, with vulnerability to shamans, but hidden! I paid gold for Cherz's lens, enchanted by a very expensive jeweler, and it still couldn't see anything. It's not good. It's not good. Get ready."

  Stepan didn't have time to say anything in response, because he was distracted by a powerful pat on the shoulder from Cherz, who had already taken out his battle staff and put on his fingers a pair of strange and obviously rge rings, most likely trophy ones. The mage himself, not too strong, but an experienced and battered Apprentice, only slightly weaker than the potential Stepan was showing, no longer seemed compcent or rexed. Eyes squinted, pupils dited, glinting in the glow of the st rays of the moon almost hidden behind a new batch of clouds. If you meet him at night you'll be twitchy for a week. He looked maniacal, and his smile matched it. Not a grin, but a thin string of tightly compressed lips, one corner of which twitched in a jerky and unpredictable rhythm.

  "I'll try to break through the net." He said in a low hoarse whisper, kneading his fingers and breathing evenly. "The Bead are big and toothy fish. They're hardly waiting for us. They have nothing to wait for. I'll accelerate the water under us, we'll pass quickly, if we have time. If we do, they won't chase us, they'll wait for the next merchant. Who's not so sharp."

  His words and deeds were not at odds. He was an experienced gifted man. He had more than a dozen voyages under his belt, but he did not shine in battle. However, he could control the flow of Dantra better than other adepts. He boasted so much and believed in the boast, and in general, traders preferred to avoid fighting rather than to fight on the river. The specifics and differences from the sea. Even if they managed to win, they would get only a light and fast dinghy, and the ammunition of the killed, no trophy ship, maybe even a loaded one. So the point of risking and fighting for nothing when you can just bail. In short distances, rowboats with a nding party of boarding parties can give a good run-up, especially if they come in facing or sideways against the current and waves of the Dantra, but in a long race, they're guaranteed to lose. Especially if they try not to enter the side of the merchantman like a shiv in a kidney, but to sit on his tail. From the stern it is very convenient to hit from bows and crossbows, hiding behind shields, there is a pce and shelter, and the enemy will be exposed.

  The river under the bottom seemed to quicken, the separate thread of the current became more alive and agile, the ship began to speed up, and the oars of the sailors no longer trying to disguise their movements, drove Bead forward. And for a moment it seemed that everything would go quietly and there would not be another epic conflict, which Stepan did not fucking need, but which he would have to solve while trying to conceal himself. The boat was accelerating more and more, the river was carrying its travelers down, too fast for the enemy to react, too fast to give them a chance to regain their senses. It was not for nothing, not for nothing at all, that the sailors, when they heard the arm, ran about the deck bent over, and instead of loud orders there was only loud whispering and sps to the confused! At the moment when the outlines of two boats, each carrying at least half a dozen thugs, appeared out of the reeds on one side and a small pond on the other, they had no time to intercept them.

  "Let's go, let's go, good one, take us away, take us away," Cherz said this to the ship with a woman's name, or to the river itself, generously, not without haste, investing the reserve, while Bastius had already thrown up some amulet that rose even higher and shone brightly, so that he did not need to hide his information. "At least forty, the good boats, and they no the trash. The illusion was powerful, so either they were gifted or the amulets were good. We wouldn't have fought them off, Bass, we wouldn't have gotten through, we wouldn't have gotten through."

  The captain realized it, throwing up a few more illuminating amulets, giving him a clearer view of the enemy. Especially the fact that both boats were sailing, each at least five meters long, surprisingly fast, much faster than just oars could accelerate, as if they had a motor attached to those boats. But the quick reaction and timely warning allowed them to pass the narrow pce on a high-speed dash, and further, they would get away. Stepan realized that these dreams were a little bit of dreams much earlier than the sad truth reached the captain and his magician. The problem was that he realized it too te anyway and had no time to fix it: even though he had summoned an assortment of scanning entities and sent them to work as soon as the seriousness of the situation became clear, he almost missed another group of the enemy and, what was worse, let them get too close to the ship.

  "Bitch!" Cherz hissed with anger, twitched and his eyes bulged more angrily than ever before when the Bead jerked sharply and lost almost all of her momentum, starting to turn sideways, causing several people to fall on the deck and one of them to roll overboard. "They intercepted. Mine. Bitches! Charms. Pulled out of the current, pulled out of the fucking current!"

  Stepan had noticed them too, the fucking divers, but it was too te. They were almost beside the Bead and had already begun to cast their spells. Before that, they had been covered by some obscure veil, including from the spirits, and Stepan had underestimated the likelihood of an attack from below. If they were on the sea, he would have looked more carefully in the lower hemisphere, but on the river, he could not expect such a good swimmer. If he had a little more time, he would call for additional groups of sensors, spreading them in a wide ring not only over the river but also under it so they would notice the enemy in advance. Then he could call Squidward quietly and forget about the attackers from below, but the moment was gone, and now he couldn't call for the octopus without being noticed, especially if he called quickly.

  The floating group of the enemy did not approach, did not attack, and did not stick out beyond the masking cloud, so that Cherz did not realize that it was not the boatmen, but the submariners who had got him. The boats were rapidly catching up, despite the fact their speed had even dropped a little, and the men on those boats were armed and very serious, really not a bunch of trash. That raised a legitimate question as to why such an honor to not the most prominent merchant, because so many gifted, and on the second boat, a strong apprentice, almost adept, stronger than Cherz, both above and below the water, these are not random raiders. Such crews as Bastius told Stepan, do not hunt the first traders they see. They prefer to work for a specific target, and the Bead was not such a target. Well, or these guys just decided to make a quick buck, time and the interrogation of the survivors would tell.

  "There is no banner, nor is there any sign of the gang." Gloomily, very gloomily and barely suppressing despair, Bastius stated the obvious, and then, seeing the question in Stepan's eyes, deigned to expin. "If without a banner, then they will not leave any witnesses. It was still possible to let them take the goods and open the treasury. If you make a deal. But this shit, it's like a direct statement that they're gonna cut. And the signs have been removed so there are no witnesses. Prepare yourself, shaman, support Cherz with what you can, I don't advise you to hope for a capture."

  The swearing ship's magician was rapidly tearing off the top yer of pnks from the stern, under which was another yer, and on that yer a ritual figure, remotely resembling a very strange hexagram, well carved and even silver poured into the cuts. He poured some powder into it, right into the cut hollows, trying to do it as evenly as possible, but it was not very good. The rocking of the boat, which was not dragged by oars anymore, because everyone was armed, was interfering, and it was as if it was caught in a trap of unfriendly water. Though it was all right, the shaking and rocking did not interfere as much as the untargeted and not especially powerful lightning came from two hundred meters. It was definitely accidental, Stepan could vouch for that, there was no control or guidance unit, and they were aiming at the keel. But the thing hit Cherz, stopping at the st moment in the barrier of his amulet, making him spill the powder and swear terribly in a nguage unknown to Stepan.

  "I'll hit them then?" He crifies, raising his hands and staring at them with a defocused gaze as if looking through them. "I have a spirit, my grandfather's method, you might say. He used to summon this contract."

  "Don't be a fool, Pann, it's a long distance. What can you do there? They have boats enchanted with the amulet, I'll give you that!" Cherz growls with rage, interspersing his words with curses in a couple of other nguages, trying to start his ritual amplifier without blowing it up with him. "You better infuse power into my ritual, so at least we'll st a little lon.... ger. Holy shit, your grandfather, and I didn't believe Kirik..."

  Stepan did not pour the reserve into the ritual draft, a cssic method of strengthening one's charms in all schools of high magic, if only because he sensed that due to haste and mistakes, one more vector of investing forces would make the draft and the machine gun point bnk burn out, if not explode, then burn out. Instead, he slowly and unhurriedly manifested over the folded palms slightly glistening in the night darkness silhouette-illusion of a boat coming from behind. The one with more attackers, at least two and a half dozen, and where the stronger gifted one almost an adept rather than just a sturdy apprentice, sat. It was better protected than the front, but when could that stop an attack from the spirit world, especially if the attacker was a very strong minor spirit, almost to the next rank, and with an exotic specialization with extremely unpleasant aspects?

  Stepan could understand the hysteria of both Cherz and Bastius, who were choking on their swearing because it was hard not to be hysterical when a small illusion boat seemed to grow old before your eyes, covered with mold, rot, even small mushrooms, and then the shaman's palms simply clenched and crushed the illusion into small splinters. It seems to be nothing like that, but the real boat, which is rge, went through exactly the same metamorphosis, to the great displeasure of the passengers, among which there were enough of those who put on their ringlets and therefore swam a bit shitty. The gifted magician even went underwater as a stone, because his high and dandy boots to the middle of the thigh, which even before the illusion of the boat was called by another spirit, suddenly began to weigh fifty kilograms each, and also the magic was pulled out of the reserve, vampirized like a powerful leech.

  "Yeah, my grandfather was a tough guy, and he didn't take jokes. Not at all." Stepan willingly tells the pure truth and nothing but the truth, pretending that he is shaky from fatigue. "A powerful spirit, however, only against river boats, namely boats, not ships useful, but it often happens with spirits."

  Yes, indeed. This entity, which Stepan nicknamed the Sadness of the Dead Wharves, for it was the image and name that suited the spirit best, was born of forgotten and abandoned riverboats, which for various reasons had been left on the shore, doomed to rot slowly, year after year into oblivion. And to summon such a miracle it was necessary to sacrifice no less than five handfuls of corpses from the hulls of five different boats that had taken a simir fate, one per boat, and it should have been the forgotten and abandoned ones, and not specially reagentized. Without reliance on the System Store it was difficult to call such shit to obedience, because at the expense of the bare reserve and will induce to contract this very capricious entity was problematic and risky. However, the young man was not going to tell about it, just as he was not going to tell that his reserve had not really sagged and he was not tired. Why should he be tired if he had paid for all the work of the spirit in advance, and he had spent only a crumb of his reserve on summoning and drawing up the images and decrees of the target, nothing more?

  The situation, as a result of Stepan's little improvisation, became noticeably more stable and not so threatening. The Bead's crew could fend off one boarding team with weaker magic, as well as some simpler fighters. Especially considering how morale had sagged after their companions had been epically sent off to swim - as, not everyone in the front boat saw it - and then Cherz finished his ritual enhancer, took his wand out of its holster, and chucked two vials of something unhealthy down their throats one after the other. A moment ter, slowly and sadly formed front of him, right in front of his face, an ice core, resembling a lemon in shape, but the size of a watermelon, and then flew with good acceleration towards the enemy. The core caused only moral damage because halfway through it was like being spped by a telekinetic barrier, taking it aside. Meanwhile, one of Stepan's one-time contracts, a very strong spirit, began to cautiously approach the pirates who were floundering in the water and had lost their transportation. They were too heavily clothed, but some of them would have swam out, but almost at once, they were all struck with a terrible weakness and a piercing cold. This spirit drowned only and only pirates of any kind, whether river, sea, ocean, or even ke, but it worked on a rge scale and imperceptibly, especially at first. In theory, it could be used to drown a pirate even in a puddle, or a home bathtub, but only if the pirate was active and regurly went to his native biome.

  An effective, albeit not particurly showy and colorful tactic.

  Hardly anyone's going to swim out there.

  But Cherz was not allowed to work free, though he was not struck by a gifted man standing on the bow of the remaining boat, who was just beginning to prepare something of his own. They hit him from below. The same guys, through whose disguise Stepan had almost penetrated and could even count them roughly, which he did not like at all. The counting turned out to be sad. The tentacle of water rushed upward with the swiftness of a snake rushing to its prey, aiming at the aura of any living creature, the brighter the better. Both Stepan and Cherz had an equal chance of being embraced, but the shaman was closer to the side over which the tentacle had swung. The Earthling, due to the sensitivity and constant observation through the pile of spirits, managed to notice the moment when the weave went from passive to attacking phase, and for the first time, the Earthling used the clock modification, slowing down time for himself and thinking feverishly.

  Thinking about deflecting now, fending off a blow, or letting the enchantments grab Cherz altogether, he could certainly do that. Yes, he could, no problem at all. The problem, as they say, is another. Underwater sorcerers need to be calmed down somehow because they are not weak apprentices, but at least a couple of full-fledged adepts. And Stepan could do it, standing on the deck and calling like a madman. It's easy enough to finish Squidward's summoning and help him a little. But then he'd either have to sink the ship with all the crew, or knock them all out and correct their memories because it wouldn't work without knocking them out, not on this scale, or just wipe the conspiracy clean. My grandfather told me to pretend to be weak because it's a big world, there are a lot of evil men in it. It's better they not to expect me to be such a tough guy, eighteen years old, organizing all this.

  Or he could let the tentacle attack, embrace him in a fatal embrace, and drag him to the bottom. In reality, of course, the tentacle would not drag anyone to the bottom, it was just silly, Stepan understood this even without the knowledge of a battle shaman. On the contrary, such spells are used to quickly break ribs and spine, hit a victim on the deck, turn it into a full-fledged corpse, and direct the tentacle to a new target. But if he could just override the spell - he had the right water spirit in his bracelet and two more in his neckce - and let himself be dragged away, it would be much easier. Expining how he managed to fall overboard and survive there, or even "fight off" the attacker, is much easier than expining the destruction of the enemy group. The main thing is to kill them all as quickly as possible, without unnecessary special effects, so that the fight is not seen from the board, and tell everyone there was just one weak apprentice with a wand.

  Yeah, that's exactly what he'll do.

  It has to work, it can't be otherwise.

  Well, there was a third option. He could take the most valuable of his belongings right now - including gifts from the Dark Lord, because he couldn't afford to let such things out into the world - jump aboard on the opposite side and get away, putting a spirit of some water-type into himself, or even summoning an entity that would carry him through the paths of spirits. It was unlikely they would catch up with him, but it still made Stepan uncomfortable. Bastius turned out to be a normal and even a bit nice man, not without sins, but certainly much better than the average statistic of this world, and he treated Stepan quite well, without any rotten thoughts and intentions, just like the rest of the crew. Of course, one could take into account the fact that only a complete moron would behave badly with a healer and be rude to him, but one thing did not cancel the other.

  The seconds stretched to the time specified in the meta-skill description. The tentacle easily pierces the first yer of protection, the air barrier long carried only for distraction and camoufge, sinking into the second, purely energetic one. The tentacle shrank around the full-body armor that resembled barely visible ghostly tree bark, and sharply thickened at the end, pumping up water and covering half of the body of the shrieking Stepan. A sharp jerk, as if something was trying to stop him, the enemy's weave carried the shaman right off the stern to the screams of Cherz and Bastius. The first almost destroyed the new ice core because of that, and the second tried to break the tentacle with a good saber with some enchantment, almost hitting Stepan's spirit. If the young man hadn't already strengthened almost completely his tentacle, easily breaking the weave and intercepting the control through his spirits, the captain might have succeeded.

  After another second, only circles on the water remained of the shaman who had fallen into the seemingly bck water of Dantra.

  And so further events passed completely unnoticed, without unnecessary, annoying, and attentive eyes.

  Almost unnoticeable.

  * * *

  Once underwater, Stepan finished his preparations at the same moment, bringing them into active form. He knew that he was going to sail along the river, and it would be strange not to prepare himself for the challenge properly: updating or revising the old positions of his arsenal was not limited to the boat killer alone, there were other entities specific to such conditions. A blink, and he could breathe freely underwater, or rather, his lungs always self-provided oxygen, and his reflexive attempts to inhale did not let a single drop of fluid into his trachea. Exactly the same moment, but in another line-consciousness, he is all sheltered by a new spirit-protector, letting go of the weaker underwater naturalist. A murky cloud of mud appears around the shaman, transforming his figure into a humanoid and blurry thing that can't even tell his gender or height. The same moment, but in a different form, and new, new, new summons come to his call, ready to kill, protect, or save the shaman who called them from anyone, as long as the shaman stays within their contracts. The shaman finally ceases to hold back, ordering his spirits to literally tear off the enemy's disguise, at the same time, taking advantage of the high sensitivity himself, seeing without eyes, hearing without ears, and sensing with his spiritual body.

  My constant jokes about a spherical-in-a-vacuum master of combat magic don't seem so funny to me anymore. Stepan's first thought comes absolutely calmly, not knocking him off his rhythm, not interfering with his reflexes and mastery of another's experience. It was the toughness of spirit, the phlegmatic character of the earthling, the very experience, and, of course, the need to act, not to panic. However, with the full power of the multiplicity of awareness, he was quite able to do both, and there was room for much more. The plurality allowed him to perform all his tasks at once and not to be te, because these fucking swimmers were clearly not happy about the sudden arrival of their guest, not at all, Stepan was offended by such impoliteness. He was mortally offended.

  To his consotion, the wielder of the brightest aura was not a master. Certainly not by the standards of the System. An Adept, just very strong, experienced, and clearly ready for battle, not taken by surprise. He was slight, a couple percent at most, stronger than Rumorias "Explosive Character" Krellb, only the aura was composed in a very different way. Emphasizing Power in the first pce. While the te necromancer emphasized Control, their Sources are almost identical in power and volume. Add to this the characteristic swirls in his aura, indicative of the potions taken before the fight and, it seems, the amplifying ritual completing the picture. Next to him are three of his disciples or companions, two of which are full-fledged adepts, weaker than the leader, but still confidently holding that rank (one of them, it seems, female), another one is just a strong, very strong Apprentice. They too had strengthened, but not as qualitatively as their leader. The alchemy was definitely simpler, the swirls in their aura, discernible to both him and the spirits-watchers, have a dirtyish tinge, characteristic of the intoxication of subtle bodies by powerful, not gentle alchemy.

  The weakest of the four holds behind the backs of the quickly and decisively reorganized opponents, but in his hands not just a wand, but a controller, a control structure tied to... uh, perhaps a golem, if Stepan wasn't mistaken now. It looked like a mixture of a catfish and a shark, hollow, as if it were nothing but backbone and bits of armored segmental pting, while inside it was nothing but emptiness and magic, no, water and magic, a kind of propulsion-generator. A captive water elemental, small and weak, but fully-fledged, having a tangible water body and long entrenched in reality. Obviously, it was the golem that stopped the already accelerated Bead, because for an elemental such a task is not a task at all, they are too friendly with the currents, and controlling their native element is so natural for them that both humans and spirits lose to them in this. In fact, the spirits of the elements and not only the elements seek to gain a foothold in reality and become an embodiment of the element because it will give them a combination of a material body, power over energy, and the usual perception of spirits. The enemy is not that dangerous. The same hyper-elk, met during the memorable escape from Fantrel, was much more unpleasant, many times more unpleasant. But this entity is in its element and it is controlled, so it will hit exactly on target.

  Against a normal mage, even a master, such a toy, especially underwater, would be an unpleasant surprise. And with the support of the rest of the company, even more so. But Stepan, to his luck, is not a mage, but a shaman, and such creatures are not so scary for him, especially if he has the right knowledge and tactics, so it turns out that he is not in trouble now. Probably. If he survives. The enemy looks very dangerous: dressed in identical armor, reminiscent of a fantasy version of diving suits, only enchanted and fortified, with water breathing masks on their faces and a set of amulets, with battle wands, and everyone also has a spare, in their hands... Suddenly, the idea of taking these guys for a fight no longer seemed so clever, and the idea of escaping seemed brilliant. The only thing stopping him was his luggage, back on the ship, because to imagine that these devils would get their hands on his totems, billets, amulets, and fucking quest gifts, albeit from the Autogoddess... it would make his ass burn... even though it's already in the water. No, as long as there was a reserve, Stepan would still fight, but when things got bad, he could call a spirit wrecker, who would drag him a couple of kilometers away from here, carrying him along his own paths.

  Or not on a couple. It's complicated there.

  They began to do bad things to Stepan right away, at once, without discounting his age, probably being on edge after the death of the poor man who was on the second of the boats. They struck swiftly, with wands, water arrows, and spears, as well as, in the leader's performance, an analog of water explosion. Along with this, the golem fshed an invocation to the liquid around him and tried to take away Stepan's control over it. Well, it would have tried, if the young man had controlled the water, as it is supposed to hydromancers, but they only wasted the power of the captured entity. The other powers were also wasted, because the Earthman met each attack separately, directing a specially chosen spirit at each one.

  Arrows were intercepted by the standard small spirits of the battle-defense specialty, spears were the attention of two or even three at once, the water bst was intercepted by a very funny exotic, though also small, creating a zone of calm, where water could not be "evil", cause any harm to a living creature. It was after that that he began to be taken murderously seriously. They hit him not in a typical and aura-rated way, but with all their might. And the increasingly obvious flickering entourage around the shaman spoke about him even better than his aura, because a "strong apprentice" would not be able to summon such a thing. Stepan was too busy preparing and summoning the perfect attacking host of spirits to hit seriously, but he counterattacked anyway, just to make life more difficult for the enemy. All of his not-his knowledge of combat encounters said in unison that even if you chose defensive tactics with a game of attrition or counterattack, you can't let yourself get hit with impunity, it's too easy to get pyed.

  Before the second, more serious, wave of blows caught up with him, he made his move. Well, a little move, a tiny little move. The same tentacle he had taken control of was still entangled in his silhouette, though there was no trace of the enemy's weave. A will impulse and the water spirits inhabited that clump of charms, interceptor spirits specialized in intercepting and working with water previously enchanted by someone else, attacked in a swift dash. The tentacle turned into a water serpent, closing in on whoever was the author of the underlying enchantments in one spurt. His ribs and spine were trying to be broken by the only maiden in the group. Whether she was beautiful or not, it was not clear at all, her face was almost invisible behind the breathing mask, just like all the others. But she was shapely and smart, because she reacted quickly, trying to regain control of her water, which only fed the spirits expecting it.

  Whether it would have killed her or not, only the admins know because of the result of the collision of the magician's defense and his snake Stepan didn't see. The leader clearly knew how to deal with shamans and their tricks. A blow at the same time with water foreign to the spirits to throw off and slow down the serpent, followed by a change of wand while the first hung in the water current, and then a cssic banishment. Stepan could have tried to strengthen the spirits in reality, to let them hold on under the first blow, but he did not, even on the contrary, he pushed them down, so that they did not die or disembodied. It worked out well because none of the three summons that had formed the serpent had completely disappeared. He didn't want to lose those summonses, because it was not for nothing that he only recruited the best and most exotic ones to his retinue, even if not for the first roles. It would be a shame to lose them!

  A new series of attacks. This time a cloud of water arrows, at least three and a half dozen of them, as if they wanted to overload both the spirits and the shaman's ability to control them. Stepan didn't wish them luck but mentally chuckled like a jackal. With his multiplicity of awareness, they would run out of concentration on creating individual charms sooner. And yes, they were coordinating with each other, too, seemingly telepathically, with the hoops on their heads glowing moderately in mago-spiritual vision. In his spiritual vision, he even saw and realized these connections, like invisible threads, along which beads of individual thoughts and messages were rolling. That is why the volley is so concentrated, from the leader also a very sharp mesh of water with a powerful electrical voltage. Moreover, this voltage does not go into the water until the outer structure of the net bursts, so that the attackers themselves are not hit.

  So not only are you a waterman but also an electrician, you bastard? Ran through Stepan's mind as he directed the spirits to the right targets, intercepting and defending. I'm wondering what the fuck Bastius is carrying that they sent this team after him, because, bitch, somehow things have gotten so fucking twisted.

  Some arrows are again intercepted by small spirits, which take water into themselves, absorb the other's power, and dissolve the kinetic impact, sometimes managing to replenish the reserve from the other's attack. The net meets the spirit of the spindle: the entity is definitely outside the standard spheres, but its combination of aspects allows it to spin threads very well on itself, any threads, including also those of which the net consisted. The electricity released would have wounded the spirit with an element of lightning, but only another water spirit arranged a dielectric cocoon around the spindle. At the same time, Stepan zily intercepted a not-quite-ordinary water arrow, even closer to the needle, which also carried a lightning charge. Grabbing this projectile with a spiritual limb dressed in another spirit, a mitten of twinkling sparks. He exhales another spirit on these charms and simply throws the gift back, along with the pnted gift. The maiden's reflexively pced shield is simply ignored by the attack, which carries its own power, but the amulet does not fail, though it has sagged quite a bit.

  The second of the adepts struck with a simple water spear, in addition to the arrows, which was also intercepted, but now it was brushed aside, for the impact was too powerful. The apprentice with the golem worked more interestingly, summoning, through the will of the captive elemental, a stream of current into Stepan's back, forcing him closer. Smiling with an invisible smile in the style of, forgive the admins, Rodisv Gastoldovich Yanin, may the universe shudder under his cruel footsteps, he ordered another spirit to activate its influence. The spirit with the aspect of flow simply and uncomplicatedly inverted the direction of the stream for Stepan. While the water rushed closer to the group, he was only pushed back another twenty meters.

  The attackers had no time to decide whether they were going to follow the enemy or concentrate on the Bead and her crew they attacked anyway, only somewhat zily, as if they didn't understand what they should do with that muddy dick (literally muddy, due to the cloud of mud defense) if he didn't get through. Stepan did not hesitate. Their intentions were readable without spirits, it was enough to remember the absence of fgs, not to mention the instant attack to the death, so he did not restrain himself either. Abruptly changing direction, he swam, pushing himself with the spirits, forward and to the left as if to fnk them. The distance between them was about fifty meters when the shaman raised his right hand, in which a figure remotely resembling a sweet lollipop-cockerel appeared, but very hot and literally boiling the water near his hand. If it hadn't been for the recently acquired property of the amulet, he might have burned himself, but he didn't.

  He clenched his hand into a fist, breaking the image-picture, and gave orders to a spirit that was strong, unkind, and very powerful in direct combat. A spirit that was a rooster. The scarlet rooster symbolizes fire and fme, and this shit was just perfectly able to create a real cloud of heat, not burning, but baking the enemy specified by the shaman. And, unlike a couple of simir tricks using spirits at Stepan's disposal, this one worked quite well underwater, not weakening at all. A second was repced by an eternity cut short for the talented maiden with the already discharged amulet when a cloud of white vapor seemed to swell around her. Several cubic meters of water instantly boiled away, creating a veritable explosion, scattering the rest of the trio and only at the expense of their amulets and the leader and apprentice's reactions with the golem, not injuring them either. Stepan didn't really expect to be able to shock them. He didn't even expect to kill the magician-adept, but if the first one was avoided by the enemy, the second one happened.

  Up, above the water and next to the side of the Bead a real geyser of boiling steam struck, in which one could find fragments of the enemy's flesh while scalding the opponents who had already boarded. At this moment the young man thought that his tendency to kill women who wished him to die was against the canons of typical harem fantasy. It was not by chance Stepan used his fighter's reflexes to put the enemy in the right position. But it seems his attack not only knocked out one of the enemies, the second, perhaps, in strength but also infuriated the strongest of them to the extent he stopped saving power, as well as restraining his soul impulses. And his soul wanted to do something bad, painful, and deadly to the shaman, which the young man strongly disapproved of.

  Abruptly he tore off from his neck some neckce of iron, not gold, ptes and threw it in front of him, letting the ptes hang in the water and shimmer. And while Stepan fended off a couple of powerful water bsts with simir electrical additives to the previously used mesh, it became a day in the depths of the river abyss. Six stable bolts of lightning with a powerful charge of ordinary lightning inside, if the shaman's spirits pnted in his eyes didn't deceive him, each of them powerful enough to demolish another stone house. And this stuff does not dissipate underwater and is directed at the aura of the shaman, that's the trouble! The young man, having estimated the speed of flight, or rather, the swim of this stuff, their impact power, sharply summoned that spirit-mockingbird, even in the early days called, giving out a loud and even underwater audible childish ughter, literally screwing into the ears and surprisingly inappropriate.

  And then he covers himself completely with the shroud, making himself an empty space. Instead of the main target, released from a handful of six brightly glowing dots, which were small mice, only created from pure radiance. In reality, it was a single spirit, just always divided into as many targets as there were sources of attack that would kill it instead of the summoner. Well yes, it would be destroyed, this spirit dies every time it fulfills a contract, but it doesn't stop it from being reborn, even if it's not really him. All six balls abruptly cut off control, ceasing to obey the mage, flying away after the mice, up, up and into the air, even higher, exploding in the air so brightly that here, at a depth of three meters, it seemed to Stepan that up there it was noon.

  And the shaman, who had already brought back his aura, this time not pretending to be weak, showed the full power of the shell, and released from his body phantom limbs - all three of them, making them long, with several joints and cwed grasps - sharply rushed left, right, down and jabbed his index cws in the direction of the leader who reflexively strengthened his defense. He could not see his face, but the reader's spirits, even through all the protection showed that he was not very happy with his position and in general, did not understand what the fuck this bastard, i.e. Stepan, was doing here. He, all of them, had been promised that there would be no one so serious, had they hired him at the st moment? A shaman would love to get much more out of the mind of a man shocked for a second by his failed trump card, but he is still almost a master. He realized he was being read, sharply strengthened his mental defenses, forced the haunting spirit to retreat, and overcame the attempt to put in drowsiness and weakness, though slowed down for a moment. Well, it's not bad anyway. To press the impact on the brains of a pure fighter, and even in direct combat, few people can afford it. However, it should be recognized Stepan attacked with a mental spirit of a suggestive type only because this call was ready, and the enemy had to be occupied with something.

  The catfish golem came at the shaman from the side, good thing it wasn't a "no piko," going for a full-body attack. The water around him swirled into a sharp cloud of small bdes. Again, the shaman was in time, spinning around to face the enemy and reaching forward with his two phantom arms, shrouded in a protective yer of what looked like stone scales. These limbs broke through the water shield, losing some of their protection, and stabbed straight into the structure of the hollow golem, unclenching fists that harbored very specific spirits of the water sphere. It was their summoning, a full summoning with a third of his reserve, not a summoning under a ready-made contract, that kept Stepan so fully occupied that he had to throw in a suggestor just to buy some time.

  SpoilerT.N. Side in Russian sounds like bok. If you don't understand a reference to Boku no Piko it's good for you.

  [colpse]The fighter's skills literally screamed that these guys excellent fighters and would definitely throw the golem into battle. In close combat. That was why they were trying to get the shaman closer. Despite its light body and not particurly massive appearance their magical assistant was a very dangerous thing, especially up close. Too enchanted to damage it with already summoned spirits, too maneuverable to dodge, too controlble to try and cut off the controls. The same water vortex of bdes could well have exhausted the spirits' defenses, and broken through them. Even so, a few bdes lodged in the muddy armor, knocking wisps of muteness out of the main mass, but Stepan repaid the favor for the blows. The spirits pnted in the elemental's flesh were the kind of spirits that could not be summoned just like that, there was no point. They were taking control over the captured entity right at that moment. Earlier the commands that the water beast had been forced to fulfill had been given through the wand in the hand of the weakest of the remaining trio of the quartet, now the spirits were crushing those signals, intercepting them and sending their own. The elemental was hardly intelligent enough to understand what was happening, but if he was, he executed the command to turn around and attack the ensving controller with relish.

  Unfortunately, the hastily summoned spirits didn't have quite the right aspects, nor were they strong enough, so the interception was not completely successful. Focused on protecting his life, the controller clutched the control rod with both hands and poured power into it generously. He might even be able to succeed in suppressing the spirits, but now he was temporarily out, and the young man didn't need anything else, he was once again fending off the attacks of the leader who was covering his fighter, trying to attack back. The enemy used something from the category of a full-fledged water ram, which can not be stopped by spirits, and he can not dodge, too focused on the golem.

  Instead of deflecting or investing power into the host of spirits, uniting them into a single block that could withstand a battering ram, as a standard shaman would do in his pce, Stepan releases the ghostly arms, as if to embrace himself with them. The spirit spills out of the body, flows out with another third of the reserve, wrapping itself around the body covered with murk in a thin film, and then it is drawn back into the flesh, only the film remains, deepens, turns from a strange bnk for a closed field into something else, into a gap and a door, its opening and its base, leading to an unknown pce and for an unknown reason. And the battering ram, mighty and capable of turning Stepan who fell under it into bone mincemeat with fragments of shit and entrails, seems to pass through it without hitting it, entering the foredoor from one side and exiting from the opposite side without touching anything in the process. It would be possible to stabilize the impact under these conditions, but it would take time and, again, reserve, so Stepan preferred to stop feeding the defense and continue attacking.

  Very bright and thin green lightning flew towards the leader, not even lightning, but as if shining ghostly threads, full of the power of life, its pervasive influence, which this life can cut off, devouring both aura and flesh. The ribbons, which were in fact spirit embodiments of tropical worms with aspects of poison and parasitism, scared the man, especially when they penetrated the first shield, broke through the second without even noticing, having previously adjusted to the magic of the first, and got stuck in the amulets. He managed to burn them out with magical electricity, disembodied a couple of them, and banished the remaining three, but he lost momentum and stopped weaving another series of ball lightning bolts inside the water spear. His apprentice, the one who did not try to regain control of the golem, just struck, but the cascade of five very fast water arrows, thrown in just a second, was habitually deflected by the spirits, which had not yet spent even half of the contracted power.

  Stepan, having dispelled the barrier, again spread his phantom limbs in all directions, only now not his hands, but the tentacles of a deep-sea octopus. He calls what literally stinks with the depths and darkness of the sea and ocean bottom. The spirit is also suggestive. He quite able to wash brains, but its main strength is revealed underwater. In battle, this shit is not useless at all. Though in pure power he is not much weaker than Squidward, even if he is inferior to him in the number of exotic tricks. At once, the water became darker than usual, the lights went out, and there was another quiet whisper in his head, simir to, but at the same time impossibly different from, those of the standard water spirit. And in this darkness, in this unnatural silence, where you can't even feel the beating of your heart, behind the back of the tightly clenched shaman, a small, barely distinguishable, small and deceptively harmless... appeared...

  fire

  light

  something different

  To be honest, to be impassive, this summoning was no weaker than Squidward's under these circumstances, but it was only summoned at night, only when the moon was not shining or hidden by clouds, only when fully submerged in deep water. He's too attached to it. Well, yes, ideally this water would be the ocean, sea, or at least a deep river, although the spirit can come in a tub of water if you call him correctly. In this situation and under these conditions, Stepan sincerely expected to finish the battle right now. He had a good chance of... well... well, or at least knocking out the remaining couple, leaving the leader alone. The light behind his back, if you look at it, paralyzes the will, brings illusions and lethargy, and also, while underwater, it is very badly blocked by standard defenses.

  In fact, right now the spirit, called by a one-time contract, which had to be concluded on nd, using a lid with water instead of a plectrum and under a lot of specific amulets, presses on the minds of those who saw its light in such a way that makes them, first, to get a little closer to the light, and, secondly, to take off their clothes, starting with masks, and to breathe in the water. The devils know - though, here, it's more the spirits than the devils - exactly what each of them will be seeing. Maybe the scene of coming home after a long hike, throwing off your soaked and dirty clothes, and sighing heavily as you rex. The problem is that they're all underwater now, wearing special amulet masks on their faces, without which they can breathe once. And, under the influence of light from the depths, the victims don't even realize they're drowning, that's the fun part.

  The original pn was to use this spirit in case things went badly and Bastius decided to set him up. In such a situation, the light was to be lit near the side of the Bead so the entire crew would step over that side. That was the way, by the way, this entity amused itself sometimes, on the darkest nights rising to the surface of the sea from the depths of the spirit world, summoned by someone very evil or wishing to do so. In general, it was not the kind of spirit Stepan wanted to summon under normal circumstances, and if it were not for the very detailed specification of the summoning, which would guarantee safety with a minimum of brains and caution, he would not have dared to summon, contract, or use such a thing. As, the circumstances were stronger than Stepan, and he only had time to rejoice that he managed to direct the will-light of the spirit not to the surface of the ship, where the boarding battle was still to take pce, but to the direct opponents. It was not enough to drown half the sailors with friendly fire.

  Lighter.

  Firefly.

  He really had hoped to end the fight right now, cackling at the thought of how successfully he'd used a Suggestor from the contractual branch of MILF's gift.... which was probably why his hopes were dashed. It took less than a second and a half for the effect to take hold in their minds and overcome the rudimentary resistance of the mages not expecting such a move, but there was a counter-strike on the fme. It was as if a salty sea wave hit the face of the shaman and his defense, and this despite the fact that he was already underwater and in the river, not the sea. The water was joined by the cries of seagulls, the freshness of the breeze, a tailwind in the sail, and images of something incredibly powerful and changeable, like the sea itself.

  When Stepan opened his eyes, he noticed another amulet cracking in the leader's hand, and the man seemed to be as surprised by the result as Stepan was. A moment ter, he was not only surprised but also a little frightened. Well, the shaman was also shitting himself a little when he got hit in the face by a charge of divine power, albeit harmless to him. The attack was very narrowly directed and did not hurt Stepan's defenses or aura at all, it even encouraged him a little and chased away his fatigue, but the spirit he had summoned had barely had time to flee deeper into his native realms when he was hit by the Lady of the Seas herself with an echo of her will. Stepan knew about this woman from the local pantheon only from the words of Shera, who was a priestess of a completely different deity, but the images were very characteristic and simir.

  And also somehow involuntarily remembered a note about the fact that the Sea Mistress had very strained retions with all sorts of deep stuff, but Shera didn't say much about it. Stepan was under the impression that it was about all sorts of Kraken, quite material, not spiritual entities with deep-water aspects, but this outburst from an unknown and previously unknown entity of divine caliber left a lot of uncomfortable questions. To his great fortune, no matter how much the shaman shat himself from what had happened, his opponents id bricks much more, and the spirit light still managed to plunge them into a light trance or at least a stupor. And so the pace was lost by both sides of the conflict in the river water, only Stepan managed to come to his senses faster.

  'Sailing the river, he said, it's almost safe, he said! Stepan thinks wryly, materializing a new batch of contracts into reality and boosting the reserve of those who have weakened too much. Kirik, for fuck's sake! If this counts as safety to you, then I'll be afraid of you, you old rascal!

  Several glowing needle sticks flew at the leader as if they were barely recognizable even in the darkness of the watery Bengal lights. In the magical vision, these thunder spirits glowed from the invested power. It was not very prudent to use electromagic against someone who could lightning himself, but these spirits had another property. They were very loud to the eardrums of even those who had no hearing or eardrums. The almost-master intercepted the lightning with contemptuous ease, seemingly even managing to recharge his shield, but the loud ringing in his ears made him twitch. His allies twitched, both not yet fully recovered, and the stronger one's water-bde weave snapped, flying upward.

  The second, who controlled the golem, had just thrown the controlling wand to the bottom, letting the artifact float away with the current, along with the completely empty and magic-less hulk of the controlled combat equipment. The elemental was gone, as were the spirits pnted there, and Stepan, to his shame, couldn't even tell who had freed or devoured it - the summoned beckoning light or the shadow of the will of the sea. Though no, that shit, no matter how dangerous it was, had a clear prohibition to harm the shaman and his spirits, and he ordered to attack only those who should not be underwater, belonging to the nd. So the impact of the divine echo that struck through the mantled relic freed the captive entity of the waters. Either that or Stepan doesn't understand something at all.

  A new attack of the enemy. Again hit by a water explosion, a pressure differential, in which the enemy invests most of the remaining reserve. However, he constantly draws new strength from the storage tanks. And again Stepan meets the volumetric attack with the same spirit that calms the water and prevents it from causing any harm to anyone. It would have been more reliable to cover himself with the anteroom again, but that would have forced him to interrupt another call, so he had to choose. The shock was not completely extinguished. The murky shield, supported by the strong spirit of the underwater ooze, had sagged more than halfway through and had simply scattered some of that cloud. Had Stepan not pnted a few strengthening spirits directly into the body he could be stunned. On the other hand, if he hadn't gotten some of those spirits into himself, making him so resilient, as if he'd added at least five points to his Constitution and Resistance, he wouldn't have risked taking the blow, preferring not to get out of the anteroom at all. Another torrent of bdes, needles, and arrows from the weaker foes who had come to their senses, including the golem driver who had now joined the attack, was automatically intercepted by the retinue, and the shaman had already finished his call.

  Releasing his phantom arms again he shifts sharply to the left, stepping out of the attempt to surround him, aiming his cwed paws at the leader. The one, already learned by bitter experience, strengthens his shields and pushes himself in the chest with a stream of water, breaking the distance. His problem is that Stepan's call was directed not at him but at the second of the remaining adepts, who was now quite apart from the shaman and almost at his back, preparing to finish the weaving of the reinforced Water Spear. As if he needed to point a finger at his target, well really! If the spirits didn't deceive the shaman, the adept was preparing to shove not just a spear in his ass, but a water-electric drill, with the rest of his reserve invested in it, leaving only amulet shields and storages. Naturally, he didn't completely squeeze himself out, there were still some storages left, but they were hardly that good, so the man's move was a literal leap of faith.

  He didn't think about the defense.

  The summoned spirit burst into reality with a disgruntled hum. It might reside and act underwater, but it didn't like it because the spirit had an animal-cat sphere. Something like an ice leopard, only about the size of an ordinary cat - if comparisons to actual size were even applicable to entity-embodied images - but the cold and ice sphere, the blizzard and frostbite aspects of this thing were well developed. The spirit was not dark, but quite aggressive, even evil. It liked to freeze and turn the living and warm into the undead and stiffened. He liked to watch the fme of life leave their bodies and disintegrate the spirit frozen in the cold flesh. And now the creature that Stepan had once fed with his full reserve, and had not spared any good offerings, was engaged in one very powerful attack, one of six paid for in advance.

  It was as if water was bubbling around the enemy coming at his back. A second ter, small chunks of ice crystallized in it, quickly coalescing into one solid lump. The chilled and frozen body, whose amulet shields didn't even come off because it had frozen right underneath them, immediately split into pieces, floating upward into a growing ice floe that, when it finally appeared on the river's surface, was the size of a small room. Again, purely for the sake of style and because the multiplicity of awareness allowed such freestyles, Stepan set off that very sound of sinister childish ughter. To be fair, he wasn't showing off, he was just getting on his opponent's nerves, and if the leader didn't show any emotion at all - he obviously valued the boiled girl much more than this frozen one - then the controller who had lost his golem was really terrified.

  The spirits of meanings were constantly prompting, pointing, and supplementing the picture of the world so that the shaman received as much information as possible. Plus the same plurality gave the opportunity not only to receive but also to understand what was received, to react in time. It would not be possible to stay in such a mode for a long time, the marbles could easily roll away from such a stress, but their underwater massacre took only a little time. Even if Stepan had no underwater breathing spirits, he would still not drown, and would not even suffer too much from suffocation. And, admittedly, his efficiency in killing his opponents at such a high rate was getting on his nerves, so much so one of them decided to say the famous "Fuck it, I'm outta here," leaving the chief to deal with the evil shit that had come down from the ship. He was alone at his mom's, even if he was an orphan.

  He didn't get far, because it was into the fleeing one that Stepan directed his next attack. Now he broke the distance with the leader, at the same time letting the spirits off the leash. A dozen shapeless and predatory leeches squeeze through the shield of discharged amulets and then the visible and invisible image of someone's mouth appears in the water as if created from stone boulders. The enemy freezes, starting to sink to the bottom. And why not freeze, if the whole aura is literally shaved by the entity that came to chew? It's not particurly strong and doesn't penetrate magical defenses at all, but it hits the naked aura with an A+. As usual, the combination of exotic properties of individual spirits gives high results.

  And so they were left alone, in honor of which the annoying and perfectly perceptible underwater childish ughter sounded again. This time, however, Stepan did nothing of the sort. The spirit, temporarily forgotten by him for more important matters, continued to use its only skill solely on its own initiative. He chose the moment more than well, because the enemy, who had time to waste most of the reserve, involuntarily shuddered, swung a couple of Water Bdes in passing, trying to break the distance and get away, and so to be under the ship, so that the Bead, on which the battle was going on, was between the mage and the shaman.

  Stepan did not interfere and stepped back a little, and then down, closer to the muddy bottom, whence the muddy streams of the bottom mass stretched on the shrouded muddy shroud, renewing the protection, covering him with an additional yer of armor. From the fingers of an ordinary, not phantom hand flew a small, pinky-length, and thread-thick snake, carrying a very evil poisonous aspect. It flew towards the enemy with the speed of a crossbow arrow, despite the fact that arrows do not fly underwater. Maybe if she had surfaced from the depths of the spheres and attacked at once, it would have been different but the bastard was too watchful, even though the spirit tried to hide: the point and concentrated banishment destroyed Stepan's contract, even though there were still a few paid summons. Stepan didn't get a rollback from the disembodiment of the snake essence, he managed to cut off the contact, but he was still upset. Not the strongest or most useful of his spirits, but one of the first he had summoned while traveling through the forests after fleeing Fantrel. In a way, a needle of nostalgic regret pricked him in the heart.

  I feel sorry for the snake, he quotes a slightly reworked cssic, adding another quote, also a cssic. It's okay, I'll definitely take revenge. I'll take terrible, terrible revenge.

  The young man began to take dreadful revenge literally in the next second, covering his opponent with a bnket of not particurly strong but numerous attacks, using mostly water elemental entities, and trying to deprive his opponent of control over this very element. He still had his amulets and was pulling up reserves from his storage tanks. Stepan couldn't estimate how much power was still left in those storages, so the enemy held on quite well and even counterattacked. Desperately and angrily, with a kind of grim determination, finally felt the shaman, who had switched to more primitive and simple attacks, was beginning to run out of steam. However, most of his attacks were aimed at distracting the young man while the hydromancer-electrician was preparing something hiding it under a specific shield that protected him from being read by spirits.

  Some of the power of the spear he'd thrown through a couple of interceptor spirits, which went back into the spheres with an apologetic "Sorry boss, I don't have the strength", knocking some silt out of his defenses, further convincing the enemy of Stepan's sagging reserve. He, of course, masked his aura again with a Shroud so the bastard could see only emptiness and could not track the reserve, but by indirect signs, it was clear that at least half of the shaman's strength had already been lost. He slowed down and began to stone more sparingly. His spirits also began to save strength. Stepan couldn't pump up the reserve from the accumutor because he didn't have a normal accumutor, and this method was more suitable for cssical wizards, but it was more difficult for shamans to replenish their strength in this way. Many spirits disliked preserved power, so they had to spend more with less results and more losses. It pays for the ability to summon a rge number of dangerous creatures in battle, becoming, for a short time even more dangerous than a cssic mage of simir strength.

  Stepan could have restored his strength with a meta-skill, but he didn't have time to spend enough to use it to maximum advantage. They finished at the same time. A sphere of lightning, simir to the one that flew out of the neckce closer to the beginning of the fight, only now it was one, but it was as powerful as the st two. It wasn't six homing bolides, but I didn't want to take on a sludge shield. Luckily, he didn't have to, because he finished his call at the same moment as these charms, draining the rest of his reserve and immediately replenishing the empty aura to its maximum, preparing to activate the anteroom, even beginning to release the spirit in the right way.

  He didn't have to, for his blow had caught up with the mage sooner than the other way around. The invisible and very secretive spirit passed through the defenses and sucked against the node of the aura that was responsible for the heart. For a second he must have felt a faint tingle in his chest, but the mage hardly had time to be surprised. The spirit's blow was painless, like a spider bite that dissolves the victim from the inside. The aura was still normal, the node pumping the remnants of power and holding the weave and its load, but this fragment seemed to liquefy, pulling it into someone's hungry maw. There was no pain, only a sudden onset of numbness and weakness, followed by darkness, from which there was no escape and no awakening.

  The uncontrolble spells quickly disintegrate, going upward, spreading across the water surface with individual lightning bolts, and some of them shoot vertically upward, probably frying some of the boarders because the crew of the Bead covers the more massive ship's side. Stepan, on the other hand, just hangs in the water for a while, trying to realize the answer to the very timely question, "What the fuck was that?" The attack of a well-coordinated group of mages, supported by equally well-equipped thugs, and under the command of almost a master of combat magic (Stepan badmouthed, damn it), and on an ordinary ship... At this moment the young man had a lot of questions for Bastius, because he was either secretly carrying a spherical in a vacuum "box with pendants of an elven queen", or there was something deeply wrong in this world. Such teams with such equipment are not engaged in the analogy of river ambush, they were quite capable of fighting a much more powerful team or even a whole river caravan.

  SpoilerT.N. "box with pendants of an elven queen" it's reference to this book.

  [colpse]No, not the caravan though! Stepan realizes, putting it all together as his brains go out of battle mode and the scanning spirits check the surroundings, including the bottom of Dantra, and find no new opponents. They didn't have enough fighters for the caravan, the most common ones, and the magical support seemed to be at an unreasonably high level. So they were preparing to take a lone boat, but with valuable cargo, and with a minimum of ordinary fighters, probably expecting the presence of an elite group of guards on the other side too. Then their behavior and chosen tactics are quite understandable.

  The problem was Stepan hadn't noticed the elite squad of powerful guards hiding aboard the Bead, except for the Earthman himself. And no matter how much he respected Bastius's intelligence, the shaman had his doubts it was he who had so cunningly hired the isekai for the right of free passage, having figured out his disguise in advance. The other options didn't really fit either... except for the fact they were mistaken for someone else in the dark and decided to be preemptive. And when they ran having seen the trap and started to run away they thought it was impossible to make a mistake and went into battle. The coincidence of circumstances, frankly speaking, is not even too unlikely, such designations in earth history, both modern and ancient, are found everywhere and everywhere resulting either in friendly fire or in an attempt of Somali pirates to raid with inftable boats on a military aircraft carrier, thinking as if they were boarding a grain carrier. This does not mean that Stepan has lost all questions to the captain of the merchant ship, but at least he stopped feeling himself drowning in madness since drowning in water does not work.

  Speaking of water and drowned ones.

  The water spirit forms a thin thread-bde of very cold liquid, turning this water into a magical garrote, slicing the raiders' leader's head from his shoulders. At the same time, Stepan unchains the other spirits, drawing blood, preventing the aura and brains from disintegrating, anchoring the spirit remnants in the severed head preventing it from disintegrating. After all, he was already curious about what the fuck had happened, and the dead, as he'd already learned, could tell him quite a bit about something interesting, if you asked them the right question and put the question right. Of course, right now he wasn't going to call those spirits who could organize a session of spiritualistic interrogation, but that's why he was preserving his interrogator because he didn't want to lose the source of information by letting him rot. Both figuratively and literally.

  Having dispatched back some of the retinue, and some of them, on the contrary, fed by the restored reserve or simply called for their repcements, the shaman made himself weightless and ordered to push himself upwards flying out of the water like a cork or a flying fish. A quick gnce with both magical and spiritual eyes at the same time multiplied by a Sensivity of eleven units, allows for a quick assessment of the situation. The situation turned out to be very pleasant for the crew of the Bead: the steam explosion seemed to have happened right under the enemies trying to board the ship, which either scattered them, stunned them, or simply and uncomplicatedly scalded them, sometimes fatally. The crew was protected by the side of the boat and suffered little, if any, moral damage, and then took full advantage of their luck, knocking out the disoriented enemy.

  Judging by the fact the corpses on the deck were mostly enemies and there were only a dozen or so of them left, victory was already assured. But it could still be bloody since the enemy had time to come to their senses and start resisting because they were better equipped and they still had the st of their gifted with them. Stepan, realizing with a kind of dejection that his desire to reach a major city quietly and peacefully without attracting attention had waved goodbye, jumped out of the water if not an avatar of retribution, then a very angry and damp shaman. The water wasn't warm in the slightest after all, which made one involuntarily want to find a contract with a walrus spirit. Jumping out onto the deck in a halo of spray and muddy silt shield, he immediately springs into action.

  And his first action was to knock aside an energy arrow from Cherz, who had clearly taken a shit and considered it a reinforcement for the enemy. Well, yes, no aura is visible, but a lot of strong entities around circling, and the shield itself, combined with not hidden a couple of spiritual limbs, looked very ominous. With a zy movement of his limb, the young man knocked down the arrow, breaking its weave and forcing it to fall with a cloud of bluish sparks, not even distracting his spirits from the protective formation. In a second motion, he uses the same limb to cast a handful of barely visible glowing sparks, which were in fact grave lights. The entities of Death, the aspect of the Grave and Oblivion, struck the backs and sides of the attackers in a frequent rain, gnawing away at the defenses where they were and where they were not, immediately gnawing into the aura tearing them apart, mangling the nodes, seeking to reach the heart. Once they reached that heart, the spirits released the power they had accumuted from eating the aura in a grave outburst, killing their target quickly and almost painlessly.

  It was a shame to waste such a good contract with a pack of entities, but nothing more suitable for a quick, inexpensive, and effective attack came to mind. There was either fire, lightning, rot, or simply no condition for mandatory target recognition, which would have hurt the ship or crew even more. The only surviving opponent was the gifted man who was suddenly left alone, who managed to strengthen his amulets and then hit with banishment from his wand, getting rid of the few fmes that reached him. He managed to turn around and even raised his wand in the direction of the new threat, but Stepan, who had already pnted a strengthening entity in his body, spat out a lump of smoky sludge, which faded the defense, straight into the enemy's face.

  The slimy impact pushed through the shields and shackled the aura as if covering it with a crust, preventing him from using the reserve and weaving spells. Then came the cssic leeches draining his magical and physical strength, making him stagger and fall, rapidly losing consciousness. Stepan, not paying attention to the still sluggishly twitching magician, shakes off the sludge, which settles on the blood-covered deck in clods of instantly drying mud. One more movement, a cp on the soaked clothes on his shoulders, and the vapor starts to flow from the clothes, instantly drying the whole body at once, as if he stood under warm fans.

  The faces of Bastius, armed with a heavy double-barrelled and even slightly enchanted crossbow, and Cherz, still standing inside the almost burnt-out and already smoking hexagram, certainly express a lot of emotions. You don't have to be a shaman or a mentalist to see in them something between "What the fuck are you?" and "This is what we sailed on the same ship with?". The isekai who caused these thoughts with emotion also has something to say, and purely swearing, but he restrains himself. Mostly because if he snapped to rudeness or even growl, the men frightened and heated by the recent battle might attack him. And that would be very foolish. If only because he went to reveal himself only because he did not want to leave this company to certain death, nor to radically clean up the loose ends, throwing them into the cold water of the night and indifferent Dantra. Anyway, by the time he was closer to the stern, three steps away from the tense men, he was almost calm and almost impeccably polite.

  "Bastius, what the fuck is this? Why the fuck is your ship being attacked by a bunch of bastards with equipment like you're carrying secret correspondence of national fucking importance?" In addition to his words, the young man in his emotions accidentally drops the head of a stern man in his forties with a neat beard, wide-open dark-blue eyes, and an ugly scar on the entire left half of his face, as if that half had been gnawed out by someone's fangs many years ago. "I have no doubt that I respect you immensely, and I have no compints about the trip, but fuck you with such sailing!"

  Stepan decided to himself that if he was right, he would not kill them, of course, because they had given him no reason to do so, and they certainly should not have told about such a cargo to a random passenger, but the earthman would beat them to a bloody pulp. With his feet. Just for unprofessionalism. If you were carrying something so secretly important, you should at least not take passengers, even if old comrades asked for them. Stepan would not have taken offense at such neglect, but now he was furious.

  "W-what? I mean, what correspondence, we didn't do anything like that...." Apparently, Bastius was lost too, especially from being accused. Especially by someone as obscure as his passenger. "Is that a Visardius Eel or something? Ahem! Pann, you, I mean, you, I mean, who are you, anyway?"

  Stepan didn't listen anymore. He turned around and went in the direction of the captured magician, having already managed to put the right spirits on a couple, to count from them their innocence, non-involvement, and complete incomprehension. Also shock and not even apprehension, but fear, because the scarred and chewed magician these two recognized. A known figure, it seems. Was. And, obviously, they knew about his power, and who one had to be to throw the bastard's head at their feet in passing. In general, the young man, limping after hitting the water, was treated as if he were a superstar. Everyone stood back and let them pass to the prisoner. He kicked the enemy's ass in the usual way, preparing to install the spirit of truth, which takes the life of the questioner as payment for answers. The shaman did not have time to use his trick. He had only to remove the paralysis from his vocal cords, and the prisoner began to speak without the help of magic, and the truth, nothing but the truth and strictly to the point.

  " ...not on you, honorable, not on you, I'm telling you, we were waiting for the Fidget, we were waiting for her, your boats are the same, the keel is the same, it's dark, you can't see a devil of the river, even with an amulet, pardon me, honorable, I would never, no way, not for any purse, I'm telling you!" Panic-stricken, looking at Stepan's indifferent face, this individual was giving up everyone, everyone, in any way and for free, as long as he didn't get killed. "And here you were speeding up, thinking that you had definitely missed, we were told nothing, Ma?tre Vizardius was in charge of everything, I was only told that we had to take the Fidget, without fire and flood, to look for some important casket. I just..."

  In general, with the bastard's nightingale singing, as well as scanty crifications from the rest of the watchers, Stepan reconstructed the picture of events, which, from the enemy's point of view, could be called "sorry, we got it wrong, but we fucked up badly!". They were looking for and waiting for a really simir to the Bead boat, nicknamed the Fidget, where the captain and the ship's magician was, by the way, a quite ingenious young dy. There were all sorts of rumors about Teresa the Pike, to the point that in the non-trading season, she could work as a wave-cutter herself. To this Bastius cautiously and with very strong respect in his tone, not hiding his fear in front of the same gloomy Stepan, corrected that, they said that the rumors about wave-cutters were true, she did not do such shit. But Teresa, who had received her nickname not for her affectionate character, was really dirty with smuggling and tight connection with nightmen. And there were rumors about working for the secret guard of the Duke de Dantrel, may he be in good health and mood. And rumors, as you know, do not happen out of nothing.

  The weakest of the raiding magicians didn't even belong to the cohort of Eel and his men. He was in a set with mercenary pirates, who on two boats attacked the ship to create a crowd and distraction. The second of the gifted and the leader of the pirate gang had drowned at the bottom of the river in his super-heavy boots. This one knew even less. Eel and his crew said at once that all the booty would belong to the breakers, except for the box they needed. He was not even ashamed to assure this promise on the contract amulet. They promised there would be additional forces of two adepts of magic, but it was also promised that they would only have to hold back the first blow, and then Eel and his team would roll the dice in favor of the attackers.

  The Eel is a different matter altogether. This mercenary, who fled the Isnds where he was born, deserved his fame in full. Having quarreled with the sea people for some wrong games with mermaids, or even trading them as live goods, he managed to leave, to get far away from the Middle Sea, but he did not forget water and swimming. So he operated in the region of river navigation, where his talents as a hydromage and lightning mage were in demand and desired. He recruited mercenary apprentices, under oaths of his own accord, acted as part of a small elite group, enjoyed the patronage of some merchant and noble houses, and was characterized by pleasant performance and outstanding competence. From these same patrons, - as the captive said with bck envy, - received knowledge and resources necessary for development. Little by little he became more and more dangerous and pulled his mercenaries with him too. For several years, there had been rumors among knowledgeable humans and non-humans that he had become, in fact, a master of magic, but he was in no hurry to confirm or deny them, nor was he in a hurry to undergo official testing. He was, to a rge extent, a wanted man.

  There was nothing for which he was wanted on behalf of the Adventurers' Guild - yes, it existed here, but, as Stepan realized, it was not the structure one might think of from the clichés of earthly fantasy - which he was a member of, or from the magical society, which he was also a member of. But some individuals, including very dangerous ones, wanted his death and were ready to pay for the head, which Stepan carelessly threw on the deck, in gold by volume, and weight by the whole body of the killed. An interesting, in short, personality almost killed the poor earthman today, very interesting personality.

  Stepan, after listening to his captive with a lean face, understood even more through the spirit sucked to his skull, sighed tiredly, giving out this time a mental: Why don't you take care of yourself? And every time he said it, he sounded more and more sincere. Clenching his hand into a fist, he achieved that the pirate, on whom the blood was up to his shoulders, which he didn't even hide, considering that he could buy his life back, since he hadn't personally brought any harm to the honorable master, wheezed and convulsed. And if his heart was torn into several separate pieces of meat, which were beginning to shrivel up.

  SpoilerT.N. Why don't you take care of yourself? - it's a reference to this moment.

  [colpse]"I just wanted to go down the river, man." There was so much tired anger in his voice you could spread it on bread. "I was even prepared for some small gang attack or simir problem. What the fuck are the chances of getting into this kind of shit just because I was unlucky? Once again, for the fucking umpteenth time!"

  "Um, Master Pann, I'm afraid to ask, and I certainly don't mean to be disrespectful in any way, but what will happen now?" Bastius's voice had taken on an ingratiating and pleading tone, but he liked the old manner of speaking better than this obsequiousness. "I will ask no questions, not a single one. And my team, as well as myself, can keep silent. It would be a simple act of decency after you saved our lives. But, uh..."

  "But why did I pretend to be an Apprentice in the first pce?" Stepan finished, nodding his head and ceasing to hide the power of his aura with a Shroud, after which he got another shudder from Cherz and a nod from Bastius, who couldn't see the auras and nodded uncertainly, clearly afraid of learning a secret so terrible that one could die. "As my grandfather used to tell me: if you can count to ten, then count only to three, implying that you can count to five so that the smartest would guess that you had learned to count to nine. And all this while you quietly master the counting to twelve. Well, this is if you take away the swearing, sps, and other compints about the stupid and negligent grandson. Here, I try to follow the wisdom of my elders. I tried."

  It wasn't that they didn't believe him, but it was hard to comprehend what he was saying, too hard. The aura of his level, combined with his very young appearance, spoke rather about an old man getting younger with potions and rituals than of a boy. And if the age suddenly true then everyone with any understanding of the magical craft would have an obvious question. Like the variation of it, which was asked by Cherz, who was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and therefore forgot about his fears and even reverence.

  "Who is your... you, that is, your grandfather? Yours. The much-revered one." Clearly trying to accommodate the picture of the world breaking, asks the magician, older than Stepan by a dozen years at least, but still walking around in near-apprentice rank. "Who is he, what, Raistar the Apostate in person? I... I don't understand. You, uh. You act, you act, I mean, like you're so young. and your questions. I can't believe you can pretend like you don't know shit. I... just tell me you're older than you say you are, that you're not eighteen years old. Because I just don't understand shit then, at all."

  Stepan more than understood his thoughts, even shared them, because it was clear to anyone that one could become a master or a bastard of comparable power by his age only if one's father was an archmage or even a god from the local pantheon. But a shaman from a remote settlement can't be such a master, because it never happens like that. This way the poor guy, who is already tormented by kickbacks from potions and ritual reinforcements, will go crazy, and the picture of the world will be cracked.

  "I don't know who your Reistar is or where he retreated from, but that wasn't my grandfather's name." The young man answers honestly, mentally thinking hard about what he should do with so many witnesses. "And he also has such a character, that he would retreat at least from wherever he was. Well, what are you looking at, Cherz? I told you, my grandfather's very tough. Very."

  The Earthman was even a little uncomfortable about what thoughts all these people could and would think about his deceased ancestor. On the other hand, if the System had fallen into his grandfather's hands, nothing in this world would have remained the same, for he was still a fruit, a vegetable, and a beast.

  "Okay, I'll try to talk to what's left of your Eel's spirit, so that he'll have his lightning spheres shoved up his ass every day on the other side," Stepan said, even without a doubt that no one would challenge his ordering tone, even if he wanted to. "Set anchor, it is not necessary to sail far from the pce of death, otherwise it will be more difficult for me. Check the ship, and see if anything's cracked. If anyone's got wounds, bandage them up, I'll treat them when I'm done."

  What was doubly indicative was the fact that the orders were followed, silently and without the slightest questioning or crification. Apparently, this society was accustomed to the fact the orders of strong gifted people were not discussed and certainly not challenged. Bastius was very interested in knowing the story of this erroneous attack and why he should shake Teresa Shchuka's throat in the future. But Stepan still heard the words, not even spoken, intercepted at the st moment, heard by the spirit with the aspect of those words that had been under-said: "He's a fucking Talker too! Fuck that! I'll retire ten years earlier with such passengers! Kirik, you old bream, I wish you had diarrhea!" - Stepan evaluated those thoughts for himself. Talkers, by the way, were called necromancers whose specialization extended to and often was limited to the ability to interrogate the bodies of the dead. Not always legal specialists, but still quite in demand.

  He could have argued that his actions were not necromancy, because it was a different approach, and the gift was not his own, but the one he used with the assistance of a summoned spirit, or working through the spirit world, if he used his spirit rather than a summoned one. But something, shamanic intuition, told him that if he started commenting on his unspoken thoughts, proving that he had another facet of talent, then Bead's crew would spit on everything and jump overboard, deciding to swim and walk further. The captain and the mage will jump, swim, and run ahead of everyone.

  And while the spirit was searching in the scraps of thin bodies and brain tissue of the dead man for answers to the questions Stepan wanted to ask, the shaman was thinking other thoughts. He thought something had to be done about the situation, but that all these actions were either very dangerous for him or simply immoral. So, instead of wandering around in circles looking for a way out of the impasse, he tried to realize what the System had rewarded him with for what he had done. If there was anything to look for as a way out of the moral dilemma, it was in his leveling.

  The twenty-second level appeared to be taken. This time, the Autogoddess also passed something from herself. Fortunately for Stepan, the learning of skills was understandably deyed, because the system's fuses recognized a dangerous situation in which working with one's own status would be suboptimal. In addition to the single level, already almost closed earlier, he was credited with another "act", which, frankly, was not surprising. A face-to-face battle with a well-coordinated team of fighters in the most favorable conditions for them and prepared by them. Stepan literally found himself in the role of those spirits who tried to pull him from the prepared position. Everything happened suddenly, abruptly, and they had prepared surprises. Even if not against him, but still - the neckce with lightning, as well as the damn golem-catfish were very unpleasant trumps in this ridiculous and unnecessary conflict.

  A meaningful act has been done!

  There is a reward for having fought an enemy ready for battle while being unprepared for battle, defeating a more numerous enemy, and showing determination and readiness to react!

  Received: one point increase in random knowledge; free talent point in minor knowledge, which can only be spent in the contracts section.

  Additional reward from Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney: one elite-type random meta-skill; increase random meta-skill by one point.

  Stepan deliberately does not accept the other rewards, pausing them, choosing only one single improvement for his deed: a minor knowledge with a contract. He literally drenches himself in tears and snot, sobs like a little boy whose game console has burnt out, and wails like an elven treasurer who has been squeezed out of funding for a massive new project without prior approval. It could have been a battle call of an elder spirit, which would have immediately closed all power issues for the next levels.... could have, yes. Stepan was already in no hurry to invest in the minor knowledge section, and he preferred to sign contracts on his own. But this was free!

  He constantly monitored his Status, kept track of the talents avaible for purchase, and, therefore, knew exactly what he could get out of a free contract. He knew what powerful entities were avaible on the System List, and knew some of them were close to the top tier of elder spirits. Knew that a couple of levels were up and he could hope to see not only the elder but also the weaker higher ones among the avaible contracts. And he also knew which contract to choose now, if he wanted to resolve the problem at hand with no trouble for himself and no blood for the others. So easy it would be if they attacked now, or if they acted like complete assholes, how easy it would be if these river transporters were ready to simply and uncomplicatedly sell Stepan into svery at the first opportunity. But he saw no evil from them, and they themselves pnned no evil against him. That tied the young man's hands in a terribly unpleasant way.

  A second to think, he can't afford more than that, otherwise he'll just change his mind and then he'll have to decide again for who knows how long. Another second and in the status there is a new minor knowledge "contract with an elder spirit: Memory Eater", and the mind begins a quick assimition of not so significant block of information. However, contracts are assimited by the mind and aura of the isekai as quickly as possible, faster only meta-skills, which in general come instantly and without any bor. The block of information is minimal, there is practically nothing to assimite, only images of the spirit, communication with him, and the specification of the new call. The contract Stepan received was frankly useless and not really needed: the spirit, passing through the branch of both suggestions and agent work, specialized in wiping out various memories and doing it to the extreme quality, so as not to be found and not restored.

  Aside from the obvious pulling memories out of the heads, this shit could eat the memory of things, the world, and even space. The perfect trick to erase all auric or spiritual imprints, and then no asshole with fortune-telling skills can find you. Unless that asshole has a trick comparable in power and exoticism to the summoned spirit. Except Stepan himself was able to erase memory, even if not so reliably and massively, and traces of aura and spirit left almost no traces after receiving a Patchwork Echo. No, the contract was still very useful, even for him, but many others were many times more useful, by orders of magnitude even, and it was not just about fighters. There was in the list of options spirit with a hard-to-pronounce image-name which could connect two holes in the ground, dug necessarily shovel, even if they are on opposite ends of the world. And you jump into one hole, climbing out of the other. Even no need to dig it personally - just mark the will of the spirit of the necessary shovels, and there just send an agent with the task to dig a hole. And after all, this Digger Offline works perfectly through the standard protection against teleportation. Track its use will only be possible if you know, at least roughly, what to expect and where exactly will be the breakdown of space. Like, the spirit of the earth sphere, shades of the bowels, and aspects of paths, silence, and connectedness, look for the following characteristics at the right point.

  And now Stepan doesn't have an older spirit of the kind he'd like to have. Well, it was not all for naught. In general, the young man decided to consider that he had paid for the erudite conversations with Cherz, who had enlightened Stepan, who understood nothing in the local society, about different aspects of being a free gifted. Some of his earlier mistakes became so painfully obvious that he felt secondary shame.

  Twenty-six summons per year, no pauses, you can call every day, the list of tasks is very extensive, the spirit is not bound by strict contractual terms like the Autogoddess' gifts, and there is an opportunity to carry over no more than five unused summons to the next year. The new year starts on the first day of spring, by the way.

  The new spirit manifests quite differently in the world from the other elder entities. It was as if he were not pushing through reality, but was quietly and imperceptibly shifting it around. A moment and then a bck woolen ball of two meters in diameter, like a spherical Persian cat, but without any whiskers, paws, and tails - just a ball covered with bck fluffy fur, hovered over the ship. No one even had time to be frightened, only surprised, as from this bck fur, visible even in real vision, so dense was the image of the spirit, flew out dozens of small and pale child hands, only with a bunch of joints, hitting clearly in the back of the head of each of the people on the ship and not quite people. Cherz was expecting something like that, at least, as he managed to raise his shields and tried to step overboard. Still, the shield didn't stop Memory Eater, and Stepan had to order a couple of air spirits to push the falling, emotionless body off the side so he wouldn't fall out and suffocate.

  A second, and then the whole crew decided to lie down to rest. Stepan y down on the deck with the rest of them, closed his eyes, and began to exchange images with the spirit, expining to the mighty and surprisingly peaceful and good-natured, as for its rather sinister appearance and aspects, entity the task at hand. He thought that if the same Lady Pike he'd been looking for was coming down the river right now, he'd freak out, call Squidward, and just drown everyone involved because he'd had enough. Fortunately, no unfamiliar captainess or anyone else around, though the spirits had even scoured the shore for random witnesses. The new contract was successfully eating away at the team's memories, leaving only a gaping void in the pce of the st battle.

  The spirit also filled this void, but he wasn't that good at forging memories, and many spirits of lower rank could outdo him but this particur individual, who had already consumed all of Stepan's reserve and forced him to use the renewal for the second time, was able to work by mass, and the erasure that had already taken pce made it easier to modify and fill the voids. In the same passing manner, the spirit ate traces of the battle from the deck of the ship, personal belongings, and even from the section of Dantra where the battle had taken pce. The bck ball that had long since passed into invisible form was zily riding the waves, completely content with life and its pce in it.

  In contrast to the wearied Stepan, who was treating the three seriously wounded sailors, giving commands to the healing spirits. At the same time, he finished rotting the second pirate boat, melting the ice block that had managed to float downstream, and collecting the corpses of the attackers, if there were still rge fragments of them. Some were swept ashore by the waves, some were given a primitive puppeteer, rising as a sub-zombie on shamanic propulsion and walking on their own, some had to be picked up in pieces, and not all of them were found. The adept who had been injured in the steam explosion had lost her entire left arm and a fragment of her thigh somewhere, and the legs of her frostbitten colleague had managed to be carried too far away. The reserve continued to dwindle, contracts were running out, and even if he hadn't gotten into debt yet, he'd still have to rebuild the arsenal.

  New memories appeared in the minds of Bastius and his crew, incomplete, unable to pass a normal check, but adequate enough not to have to pass it. A routine water skirmish, in which two of their companions had been killed. They were attacked by some raiders, strangers, without fgs and signs. They got kicked and retreated, leaving behind meager trophies (most of them will have to be disposed of somewhere, along with the corpses, because the current trophies are not meager anywhere after all). All in all, the mopping up of the memory and the battle site took about three hours, dawn had not yet begun, but it was already close. The east was getting lighter little by little. By this time Stepan had finished with Eel's head, or rather, finished with the spirit, and then just handed the shaman the images with the answers to the questions. A very pleasant and intelligent entity able to communicate with people and shamans, so it was not difficult to read the received images.

  Well, Stepan now knows for sure the rumors about Teresa the Pike's connections with the agents of the secret guard of Dantmark are not rumors, but the truth. And she really had to deliver a message and secret reports from a small satellite town, not even formally Free, but under Dantmark and Duke Herbert de Dantrel. The local bosses of that town, who felt the Duke's tight grip on their throats and balls, were displeased with their machinations and managed to calcute the one who would deliver the evidence of these machinations, jointly shared the money to hire Eel. The poor thing has disappeared, she was beautiful, though a bitch, what a pity, but don't be upset, your lordship, we have brought you some presents. The Duke, of course, would understand the subtext, but, as Eel's employers thought, he would accept a ransom for their insolence and would continue digging, rather than start hanging respectable people at once by the Duke's will.

  Stepan, who was not concerned with this story did not go any further. He only memorized the names and images of the employers, just in case. They were not as angry as the te Rumorias. They didn't want him dead personally, and their crimes, as Eel understood, were economic frauds and tax evasion on a rge scale, not any bckness with altars and bloody victims. At least those crimes became known to the hired magician, who also collected information about the employer. Again, it was just in case, and there was no chance it might come in handy. Stepan didn't look for anything else, and asking the spirit new questions would waste his reserve, which was not infinite even with replenishment.

  Having finished with the crew, which now stood back in their seats with empty eyes, he gathered his things, having met the dawn, and then, having covered two rge shoulder bags with spirits that would protect them from getting wet, stepped overboard and swam to the shore. He didn't want to interrupt his trip, he wanted to make it to civilization after all, not get off the bus in the middle of nowhere, but it wasn't working out. The longer he kept Bead at anchor, the higher the chance someone would notice them and everything would finally go to the known pce. And the corpses would have to be disposed of, even if the boats had successfully turned to dust and gone to the bottom. Because Stepan had a suspicion that these individuals would be searched for, and he had contacts of another entity, which was very good at getting rid of bodies, and, as it seemed, he could now protect himself from it.

  The crew and their captain will get memories of how the weakling shaman, a day and a half ago, could not withstand the river rocking and said that the spirits were waiting for him on the shore. He asked to move to the nearest avaible approach closer to the coast and disappeared. Well, it happens, especially if you have spent your whole life in a remote corner, and here Dantra, with all its endless ndscapes, rocking, and nausea. Of course, you can ugh at the boy, but not in a mean way. Bastius even tried to talk him out of it, but the young man was in too much pain to tolerate it.

  It happens.

  Whatever.

  * * *

  When he reached the shore, he ordered the Memory Eater to remove the stupor from the crew, and concealed himself, as well as the pile of bodies visible from the boat, with an illusory canopy, spending another contract that, again, would have to be restored ter. An hour ter, when the boat was finally out of sight and there was no risk of attracting the crew's attention, he began to drag the corpses away irritably and as quickly as possible. Stepan had prudently swam out to a small but dense and dense grove, where he had even once had his own guardian spirit. His footprints remained in the spirit imprint, but old, aged years and years ago.

  He wouldn't make self-propelled zombies out of corpses again, even though he could. It would require strength and the summoning of new contracts, and he had used up his old ones. It was easier and more economical to pnt another spirit in himself and carry the dead himself. The young man was gd that he hadn't got himself a metaphorical toad, which would have definitely crushed him in response to the fact that he completely ignored all the amulets and artifacts of enemy mages, even wands or protective amulets. What's the matter with that? He didn't even take gold out of his hidden pockets, he just didn't see the need given the avaibility of the system store. And they didn't take any special riches with them, because why take them with you if you pn to take them yourself, from those who stand in your way?

  Only after he had finished with the relocation and wiped off all the traces on the one-and-a-half-meter sandy spit of the wild beach Stepan began to prepare the ritual. He didn't want to call that dark nature thing, but the spirit had accepted sacrifices favorably in the past, especially if he didn't ask for anything in return. He still wouldn't risk activating that Oak Leaf until the balls were in cws, but it was one thing to call to battle, and quite another to ask for gifts, and for those gifts for which you weren't going to ask for anything in return. Again, he will definitely put the defense, and the mark of roots will strengthen the spiritual echo at the expense of the mark of passions which will affect the likelihood of attack.

  Reducing that probability.

  Probably.

  Stepan really wanted to believe that.

  It was frustrating that he couldn't use the replenishment, but he couldn't wait five days for a meta-skill refresh. Such a wait would only lead to the corpses becoming stale, a less valuable gift, or even insulting. But no, the tter is definitely not the case, as this shit is too decaying and decomposing to be to her liking. The problem is different. The death of such a powerful mage may well be already known. It must be known, if he, like those Krellbs, has the right amulet, which monitors the state of health. Could it be that right now, one of the patrons of Vizardius the Eel is rushing to the city's necromancer-spiritualist, asking to summon the spirit of the deceased to answer questions? No, no, no, no, and no, Stepan would not wait five days in the company of slowly rotting corpses. He wanted to finish it all as soon as possible.

  Everything was ready before lunchtime, right at the moment when another ship, very, very simir to the Beadle, especially the rear part of it, and even in the daytime simir. And the observing spirits pointed out three bright auras at once, matching the full-fledged adepts of magic trying to hide. No comparison with Eel or even his apprentice, more like a mid to low bar, but still an impressively excessive number of gifted aboard a simple merchant ship. So one of the three was the captainess with murky connections and high patrons, and the other two were the adepts she'd been given to reinforce her. The shaman raised the spirits higher into the sky, making them as inconspicuous as possible. The crew walked carefully, someone from the mages had created and all three of them regurly monitored the signaling network, including the bottom.

  They passed without noticing anything, but Stepan postponed the ritual until noon, and then, after thinking about it, until nighttime. It wasn't very clever to call a dark spirit at midday, whether you had a root mark or not. However, another outburst of emotion pyed a part in his procrastination. The assignment from the Autogoddess appeared on time. Stepan, of course, suspected that this Theresa was nicknamed "the Pike" for a reason, and he himself had almost died because of her indirect influence, but this was just emotions. The assignment suggested the following action: to put suggestions and persuasions, which will lead the captain to the idea to reward especially distinguished members of the crew with especially nice awards for their dicks - an excellent and quite obviously-normal idea. Successfully tied the sail rigging - grope the captain's tits, took on extra duty - the captain will help to relieve tension with a hand, distinguished yourself in the reflection of boarding - all the holes and slits of the captain's body are at your or yours, if there are many distinguished, disposal. A full-fledged average assignment, with such rewards that bitter tears came to his eyes when he pressed the refusal.

  Or is it just the sun's rays that started hitting his eyes?

  Having covered the already stacked bodies with a stasis field supported by seven alternating spirits, and carefully stepping over the drawn lines of the ritual, he stepped aside, sat down under a tree, banished ticks and other biting critters, sat in a restorative-meditative pose, and began to deal with what the System had bestowed upon him for the battle. First of all, the shaman accepted the level increase, wincing at the phantom sensations of another gift from the Autogoddess that ran through his body with caressing touches. Who would have doubted that Milf, had raised the level of something not useful? Certainly not Stepan, no, he had no such doubts long ago.

  This time, Her attention was paid to meta-skills, namely "lecherous development", which became "lecherous development IV", amplified to the maximum at the current characteristics indicators. The result was significant: just as moving from a two to a three gave a qualitative and extremely powerful leap in effectiveness, so too did moving to the next stage support this trend. Even more weighty increases in experience from any debauchery, that own, that provoked by their skills, as well as increased rewards for "special mini-assignments" with the need to conduct some specified sexual practice. And, most importantly - the ability to once every three days once and for all raise any of the fucked up women one unit of characteristic of his choice (of course, if the woman is outwardly sympathetic to the hero-lover). Okay, if she's just ungifted or weakly gifted, it's not a big deal, but a master or a magister in a skirt will jump in and won't get off. If Stepan didn't already have a system endowment of characteristics, he would be fucked up, but he just raised his eyebrows. Well, this gift wasn't the craziest thing the Autogoddess had ever done.

  Stepan would have liked to invest a talent point in spiritual dialog, bringing it to the limit allowed by his stats up to advanced mastery. He wanted to, but didn't, because it could be so intense that it would take him until the next morning to recover. But, as a dubious consotion, the next increase in dialog and call practice will be avaible only after gaining at least twenty-one units of Spirit and sixteen units of Sensitivity. A gentle hint from the System, saying that it won't happen easily. And also hinting at the development of new areas of shamanism, or even not just shamanism. Not to say he's directly so against it, more just gd, but still a little offended. He wanted everything at once, and to bring pizza, with double cheese, even with pineapple. For the sake of remembering the Earth, the young man was ready to do even such a thing. In all seriousness, he was well aware of how overfed he was. Besides, didn't he pn, and for quite a long time, to change the direction of development, striving not only upward, but also sideways? Now he was left with no choice. Even with medium-ranked assignments or adventures that kept happening despite his attempts to avoid them, it would take him a long time to reach the next level of characteristics.

  The two meta-skill points given by the Autogoddess were easily learned. Meta-skills are always easily learned, but they don't bring much joy. Only another tired exhation, with which Stepan got up from the ground, walked to a leafless tree on which buds had not even swollen yet, strengthened himself with a small spirit, and for three minutes beat that tree with his fists as hard as he could. The knuckles on the reinforced hands were not hurt, but the tree lost some of its bark and sagged inward a little. It was good that he had thought to muffle the sounds, or his boxing sparring against the still-living log would have woken the whole forest.

  The improvement of the elite meta-skill was quite obvious: "small system endowment of characteristics" became " minor system endowment of characteristics". The maximum attribute increase did not increase too much, reaching twelve units, but the minimum attribute increase rose to four units. The rate of renewal of this blessing did not increase, being the same calendar month, but there was a sudden synergy: a fifty percent chance that the charge will not be spent if you apply the gift on a woman right at the moment of intimacy, but only if it is the type of intimacy specified in the mini-quest from the lecherous development. All this was well within the development of the Autogoddess' gifts, Stepan, to be honest, had expected something much more shocking and overwhelming.

  Well, he did.

  His second elite meta-skill was indeed elite, so cool that it opened up a new column of his status showing the shaman's avaible "Deals". And no, it wasn't about a new subtype of contracts with spirits or other entities, not even contracts with demonic entities, no. This status column was for completed deals with Liarat si Merrinal herself, the Lady of Gifts and the Giver of Gifts, a loyal servant of Innes Inney. The meta-skill was called "accepting a system deal with a patron (Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Gift-giving, faithful servant of Innes Inney)" and was not pumpable by any means, immediately being given in its maximum configuration. And, it should be said, reading the terms of the proposed deals, Stepan caught himself thinking that he was almost ready to agree to these terms simply out of greed, which made him even more annoyed.

  The essence of the skill is that the user of the System gives his patroness a certain power over himself for a certain time, in return receiving some rewards, both at the time of acceptance, the deal, and on its closure. Eternal bargains, which have eternal influence, were not yet avaible, but, said the help, they can be added with the growth of levels or other changes in the Status of the character. The Deals are always finite. Their number is added with level growth in a random way, but it may well happen the pyer will fulfill them all and close them if he sets such a goal. And then either wait for new handouts or enjoy what you already have.

  At the moment, three separate and independent deals are avaible, although you can only execute them one at a time. Learning about each of them caused a fierce desire to get up and once again torture the tree with punches. Stepan read the statements of the certificate, listened to the shades of images, and with every second he was boiling more and more. As his namesake would say now: "At this moment my ass could be confused with the Astronomicon, so it's burning!" - and Stepan Normal was closer than ever to creating the Astronomicon. Three deals, three offers, three titles, "Cute and Innocent", "Sweet Attraction" and "Big and Soft", for closing each of the three you can get three free talents and two stat points, and, importantly, without any risk or bor, it was separately noted. Getting under the deal could not cause a life or health-threatening situation, only Stepan's pride would suffer if he decided to agree to such a thing.

  The first deal, first of all, will rejuvenate the already youthful-looking and not aged outwardly since the moment of arrival. However, his youthful appearance and the absence of even a hint of mustache and beard were most likely only a consequence of the "blessings of health and long life", nothing more. After the deal, he would look like himself for the next three months, but in his teens, fourteen or fifteen years old. As a bonus, he will be able to keep this appearance even after the deal is closed, and aging will be slowed down again even more than it was slowed down before by the accepted properties and magical gift. This in itself is not a bad thing. Even if being a small gifted brat in the conditions of this world would attract a lot of attention and probable problems, for three talents and two characteristics Stepan would go for it at a run and ask for more. Young age? It was better to be young, healthy, and strong than weak, old, and sick - that was a truism.

  The problem was that this deal was not limited to rejuvenation alone. The will of the insidious Autogoddess would literally erase from the mind the very concept of any form of intimacy, all experience, all knowledge, and even the very concept of sex or at least handwork. A sweet and innocent boy will still be excited by what is happening to him, by the sight of beautiful girls and women, but will not really understand what is so strange happening to him and what these unknown feelings are. As if at once you turn into an offspring from an incredibly strict monastery with a vow of celibacy and a complete ban on all shameful, and one where all of the above prohibitions are really observed. Again, it's only for three months, but for three talents and two points, you can be patient. It could, but She, the Lady of All Milfs, did not stop there again.

  The fact that even if the "innocence" of the deal maker is "lost" does not cancel the fact that the memories of how innocence was lost and everything learned in the process will disappear in the morning, will seem like a blurry and obscene dream without clear pictures. Okay, that's not the worst thing either, especially since no one is ordering innocence to be lost at all..... because they don't have to. A twist of fate, simir to the one that already hangs in his status under "Special" allows him to viote the theory of probability in a particurly vulgar way. Something simir will be applied to the bargainer. On Stepan, who is under the effect of the Deal, all sorts of lecherous girls, dies, and moms will fall from all sides, wanting to seduce the boy and teach him bad things. The boy with no experience in countering seduction and dazing from a completely new sensation. In such a situation, it is very easy to suddenly find yourself decssified, leaked all the information about yourself and the System, as well as signed a dozen contracts, and successfully married some smart dy.

  Ah, stop, a slip. It will not be possible to tell about the System. The same influence of fate (for the time of stay under the deal), which will allow this topic in any intimate and not-so-intimate interrogation to bypass. And if not, some quite pusible legend-expnation will come out of subconsciousness. The joke about a harsh grandfather who brought up his grandson to be a senior shaman at such a young age will be brought to its logical conclusion. Ha-ha, very funny, Your Milfness, but Stepan didn't want to ugh or smile. He didn't want to, because he knew for a fact that he would still agree to such a deal, he would just sit in the deepest corner of the forest, running away from women as if from fire. For three talents and two stat points!

  The only thing is that the memory of the deal itself and its terms is blown away from the person who made it first and necessarily. Even looking at the status and seeing a line with the Deal and its description, the person who made it will simply not pay attention to it, immediately forgetting after reading it. No, there may still be a chance to break the Autogoddess, say, to migrate to some maximally remote hole, where the nearest vilge is just three months away, and then accept the deal, forget about everything, and start thinking about why he came here in the first pce. But, remembering the property of fate manipution, and also knowing the vicious character of the Autogoddess, right there, at the same second, he would fall into the Underworld, and exactly into the personal bath of some drow matriarch.

  The other deals differed a little in details but were about the same problems with missing solutions. Sweet Attraction also erased the memory of itself but did not change his appearance, acting a little differently, but for six months at a time. On the one who accepted this deal, there will be random and irresistible desires to lick the pussy of the same random women, any, from the well-known, to just fshed in the crowd, just always beautiful and desirable. This desire will seem absolutely natural and will not cause a single question about the reasons for such desires. A desire and that's it. A mighty shaman has the right to have fun as he wants and not think about any nonsense. As a bonus - the very distortion of fate, thanks to which it will always be possible in one way or another to bewitch, seduce, or banal coax your target and get the opportunity to work with your tongue.

  And, importantly, in moments of such compulsion, Stepan would not want anything else, neither normal sex, nor to touch the tits, nor even to undress himself. Just lick, cum without touching himself, maybe several times in a row, and then correct the victim's memory, if at all necessary, say goodbye, and be it. The effect can come once a week or several times a day, that's why it's random. The exact same thought of being able to activate the deal in the middle of some local Sahara desert ran into a simir problem with probability. He'd probably just meet a bunch of hot dies right the next day without leaving the desert. There's not half a word or half an image about it in the reference, but if the Autogoddess didn't provide for such a trick, Stepan would eat his neckce.

  Big and Soft of all three deals might have seemed the most innocuous option. Erasing the memory of the deal, a five-month time limit, and the effect on the mind of the receiver. Roughly speaking and describing everything as briefly as possible: the loss of will in the presence of big-breasted women, and the bigger her breasts, the harder it is to say no, even if she demands something on the level of "sign this contract, drink this potion and put on this colr". Fulfillment of any request seems right, and correct, even if you subconsciously realize the wrongness of what is happening, you can not resist and do not want to. Oh yes, so Stepan was not bored, all met titty seductresses will instinctively see and understand his weakness. And they will not see anything strange in it, they will set up the necessary purpose of logical conclusions. From simple "the boy likes boobs, but he thinks with a different head," to "apparently, he once put in his head bookmarks, which he did not know about, but now they will be used by me". And, of course, the unspecified in the help, but obligatory to be there is a tweak in the probability of meeting a bustier bust bearer in any random situation.

  Stepan involuntarily imagined how events would have developed if he had met Truda - who had already left him morally scarred and lowered his faith in humanity - while under the effect of this Deal.

  He imagined it.

  Stand up.

  He went and beat the tree some more.

  To distract himself from the urge to shout to the heavens that the heavens were holding him for someone else, Stepan sat down again in a meditative position and accepted the st of the list of awards he had received. Raising a single random knowledge, given his already highly branched Status, could take a very long time, especially when raising an already developed talent. Stepan had good reason to believe that one of the least developed blocks of knowledge would be promoted, simply because it was standard practice for the System, the regur System, not the Autogoddess' gifts - he had noticed this pattern more than once.

  He's not wrong now, characteristically.

  Received: "advanced fundamentals of spiritual bargaining and contractual agreements with otherworldly entities".

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer status.

  It was definitely not a useless load, which pleased Stepan. Learning a useful and necessary block of knowledge not only increased the shaman's overall efficiency but also helped to calm his nerves after another of Milf's pranks. Damn it! At this rate, he would have to get a magical analog of sedative, otherwise he wouldn't have the nerves to endure all this without changing his css to Berserker, or even changing his race to Demon of Wrath. Jokes were jokes, but every fucking time he was almost ready to accept reality, to come to terms with the whims of the world, the Autogoddess would pull a new trick and he'd fsh his ass again as if he had a fuel and lubricant factory in his ass, no other way.

  Contracts, as such, were part of a great deal of other knowledge, beginning even with basic call practice. Now the knowledge of contracts had become deeper and more complete. Revealed ways of making stronger, more reliable, more difficult to deceive and break, ways of summoning very specific spirits of deals, including some that were quite cunning. Most of all, agent work, which provided for such games with meanings, turning an ordinary contract into a death trap or a beacon for powerful subjugating and cursing influence by rearranging a couple of commas in the contract, if it was written on paper, or a couple of images in the stream, if the contract was made with a spirit, pleased him the most.

  Interesting types of healer spirits that can roll back healing if some part of the deal is not fulfilled, combat spirits that forcibly enforce a contract to prevent escape or evasion, and curses activated by a certain condition, like crossing a door on the wrong foot or trying to sleep with your feet facing north. Very powerful contract spirits for summoning, as well as creating complex contract anchors using multiple type spirits with simir aspects. Without multiplicity of awareness, the tter trick is much harder to pull off, but even with it, it's not a common task. Territory contracts, act on the principle of authority over one territory, imposing rules on visitors at the expense of that authority. From a simple prohibition to litter, be rude, and cut the throat of a sleeping ndlord, to those things for which the throat can be cut. To give part of the aura to feed the spirits and anal virginity, not seeing in what is happening nothing strange, for example. Of course, it takes a long time and effort to prepare such a trap, especially against someone gifted and strong, but the very fact of the possibility contributes to the desire to see such a contractor with a second smile on his neck.

  Making deals over very considerable distances, using various reys, and ways to save forces in such reys. Totem contracts and contract totems, the creation of full servers to handle multiple oaths of all sorts, and the ability to manipute parts of the whole within a limited framework. Someone made a contract to supply candle wicks and someone else to sell their beautiful daughter into svery, but is it so impossible to swap two recipients if the contract was made on the same totem? A whole host of ways to create contracts that affect the mind or body, that make you feel love or pleasure for certain things or for certain individuals. Plenty of ways to turn any aural contact, not necessarily even of a sexual nature, into a basis for further dealing. The ability to hide a contractual influence inside a sly or not-so-sly curse, along the lines of "if you were able to break the curse, you're now obligated to do the following". The longer Stepan learned his new knowledge, the more he realized that contract types of magical influences, whether shamanic or not, were inherently very sneaky things. They can be used for something good and useful, but there are many more ways to do something immoral or bad with them. And Stepan valued this knowledge many times more. It showed not only how to do a mean thing, but also how to avoid it, and if he could not avoid it - to break it.

  On its own, the advanced basics wouldn't give too much, but not when combined with the knowledge and properties already in pce, tching onto each of them and opening up from new angles. Yes, initially this knowledge was tuned to spirits, to working with them, to making stronger and more reliable contracts, maybe with a double bottom or an attempt to remove that double bottom. But the same agency work admirably almost doubled the pool of knowledge, stretching the information block to the inhabitants of Reality, too. Especially the denizens of Reality. This only proves once again how much the work of secret agents is actually full of all kinds of dishonor, blood, and betrayals, not like in James Bond movies.

  By the time the young man regained consciousness, the st rays of the sun were hiding behind the horizon. The pair of strong spirit suppressors that were supposed to cut off the pile of corpses from the spirit world and prevent their location from being sought by magical means were silent. No one seemed to have tried to summon the shadows of the previously living to ask about the circumstances of their st battle, but he didn't want to dey any further. He had already condemned himself to another hike through bushwhacks, swamps, and other wildernesses, and there was no reason to increase the risk that he would have to run from the search parties of unknown individuals in these bushwhacks.

  Now, though, having had another mental catharsis, and having extinguished the butt that had been burning brightly since that unnecessary battle on the ship, he was fully prepared to perform the ritual. The usual fatigue and desire for sleep that followed the increase in knowledge was now gone. He was very lucky in that three of the four status increases were meta-skills in nature. The mood, Stepan was ready to repeat this several times, was not so much uplifted as reached a bance. The Autogoddess's teasing had scorched another portion of his nerves, causing a fit of rage and burnout, and become just another detail of his already frantic existence. The young man was in a calm so deep that he seemed to himself an unbreakable rock in the storm of the world around him. The impression was deceptive and dangerous, but at the same time surprisingly soothing and peaceful.

  From the ritual, he expected all sorts of insidious shenanigans or just an attempt to take Stepan and devour him when summoned. For this purpose he had prepared a powerful protective circle, a couple of decoys, which the creature would chase in the first pce, and also one funny river spirit, which, if he jumped into the water would take Stepan many kilometers away in a couple of seconds carrying him to other waters of a mighty river. However, not necessarily the same one he had jumped into originally, but that's the details. The barrier, deceptions, and the reinforcing spirit pnted in his body should be enough to make it possible for him to win five seconds. In the five seconds, it would take to dive into the water and escape the wrathful entity. Still, Stepan suspected that the Old Root he was summoning was an entity either at the top of the elder hierarchy or, more likely a full-fledged Higher One.

  The ritual was so normal and trouble-free that the young man suspected it was compensation from Fate itself for the "successful" outcome of his river sailing trip. The spirit came, appeared at the shaman's call, which had become noticeably stronger, evaluated both his spiritual marks and his increased power, evaluated zily, calmly, and indifferently. Stepan physically felt how in the depths of this entity there were thoughts full of life and death at the same time, choosing, evaluating, and understanding. They came to the conclusion that it would not be possible to quickly kill the one who had called him, perhaps that was why he had been spared earlier, to leave him to grow, to call him again and again, until the one who had been called decided to take everything. The shaman sensed this readiness, this eternal and fleeting tranquility, in the heavy air filled with the stale odor of decaying leaves, in the tree roots that stirred under the cover of the frozen ground, in the rustling wind that pyed with the long-fallen leaves.

  The spirit evaluated him, weighed him, and recognized him as not light enough to devour with a guarantee and prevent him from escaping from his prepared position. And so, the spirit, as indifferent as before, neither disappointed nor delighted, neither angry nor good-natured, only absolutely calm in its being... accepted his offering. The frozen ground fell, revealing a huge pit in which an indescribably horrible, disgusting, and at the same time attractive and beautiful mass of mushrooms, moss, roots, and dead leaves was moving. In that movement could be seen jaws and hands, fangs and cws, which in a few moments took all the sacrificial flesh to the st drop, taking back under the ground and away from the phenomenon colossal hole-mouth, leaving just a wide hole half a meter deep. Apparently, he had just witnessed the partial manifestation of a small portion of the summoned spirit.

  The aura of the grove had changed, become very different, more sinister, and heavy, as if it were too alive, yet constantly in the process of dying. Now, he was sure, even on the clearest of days, the pce would remain in semi-darkness for decades to come, the trees would always look bushy, wild, untended, and old. But not the slightest trace of devoured bodies and flesh, either auric or physical, could be found here. The spirit left, calmly and without emotion as it expressed the st image, reaching for a strange dry leaf lying on the ground nearby, but slightly away from the escape route. The image it sent was succinct and almost identical to the one it had sounded st time, exactly the same frightening and impassioned...

  call

  I'll be

  ...as it had sounded in a simir situation before, in that ritual a few hours away from Fantrelle. Only today and now the sacrifice was not alive, but much more abundant and massive, and the sacrificer himself had become unequivocally stronger and more competent while remaining cautious. Now there was a certain addition in the images, a crification that the one who came to the call would not touch the one who called, only him, but would take all those near him. The young man still had no intention of calling a creature of such power other than to die handsomely and in good company, but he still wouldn't throw the leaf away. Only now he promised himself not just to carry it at the bottom of his backpack but also to put it in some kind of insuting container. The strength and attention of the higher spirit in this leaf was still as tiny as before, but it was bigger than before. Stepan did not want to keep such a thing outside the protected perimeter and without supervision, because no contract of the spirit with the shaman does not bind, no one would forbid him to strike suddenly and meanly. Well, except for the fact that it was not profitable for him and he would spend more energy than he would gain from devouring the shaman.

  The Earthman, of course, will not test this theory.

  There were no system messages or level increases, but the experience was at least a fifth of the new level, even a little more, though it was still far from a quarter. After looking around and looking at the changed grove through the eyes of his spirits, Stepan clucked his tongue and gathered his belongings, moving to a new pce. He was uncomfortable here, despite the reinforced marking of the roots and he did not want to stay, even if it was all just imagination. He had to carry both backpacks, however, under the reinforcement of the spirit that had possessed his back muscles, otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to lift it all. Although, with a two in his Constitution he would have been able to carry it all, just getting tired and sweating profusely.

  The shaman set up three kilometers from the grove and about the same distance from the river, where he managed to find, not without the help of the spirits, a surprisingly convenient pce to camp. A small stony hill. On it is a rge boulder covered with moss, resembling the letter Л. Inside the embrace of this rock was dry, and improvised stone walls closed on three sides, leaving open only the "entrance" and the top. Quickly expelling all sorts of critters, warming the stone and pseudo-cave, vaporizing the remnants of dampness, as well as the first sensible use of a spear-horn in a long time: he stuck it into the ground in front of the "entrance", and on the shaft of the cloak hung, covering the "ceiling". Then put both bags together, cover them with protection from weather and beasts, and put the gift leaf separately, also covered with protection, mainly to prevent the leaf from escaping. He was not going to leave the strengthened beacon next to the valuable totems, as it was possible to be left without totems if the entity of nature decided to eat through such a mediator.

  And then, tired and exhausted, he covered himself with a thin bnket, whose reflection in the spiritual world was very thick and fluffy, which made it warm great, closed his eyes, and passed out.

  * * *

  As always tely, I was dreaming nonsense and amplified nonsense at that. A heavy ritual, a lot of worries, and for dessert, the ck of activated dream catchers to stabilize the visions. The spirits of the dream catchers, caressing and sucking up to the strong senior shaman, only provoked these visions more, filling the dream space with various images, among which no two simir ones could be found. At some moments the young man was aware of himself asleep, watching the dreams as if from the outside, noting details that immediately slipped from memory, at other times there was no awareness, the images buried under themselves, and the sleeper considered himself part of the dream, or did not realize himself at all.

  A very expensive and coolly furnished office of some extremely powerful corporation in the style of the cyberpunk elite. Meeting room. An important board meeting. Only instead of people at the table there are humanoid frogs and toads in expensive jackets. The main toad is loudly pounding on the table with his fist, loudly demanding increased efficiency, increased profits, reduced costs, and new money-making projects. All because it's not just any day. It's Wednesday. This is why they all, as proper business dudes, need to be especially efficient. One of the frogs, who had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie a bit, rexed and said that Wednesday was just Wednesday, so there was no critical reason for them to excel today. The toad-boss looked at the frog for a few seconds, and threw him out of the high-rise with his chair, breaking the panoramic window.

  It's a huge stone city on a hill that would make Minas Tirith from Jackson's movie adaptation weep with envy and rewrite itself into small farms, but it's completely empty and dead. Not because it's full of undead, but because there's no one there at all, all the houses are abandoned, all the towers are empty, everything is deserted, and looks as if the inhabitants just up and left one day without taking anything with them. A lone figure walks through the city, tall, stout, and trim, wearing completely earthly clothes and carrying a pistol. The figure looks around nervously but does not stop, as if something is calling her into the depths of a dark and gloomy pace of white stone with red veins. Somehow it seems that it is not a pattern on the material of the walls, but that rivers of blood are flowing down the walls of the pace.

  The figure, the city, the castle, and everything else, even heaven, Buddha, and Alh, are swept away by a swath of giant ostriches, saddled with garishly dressed dwarfs. The lead ostrich-horse lunges forward even harder and the dwarf riding it yells something about going to Narnia before crashing into a huge and infinitely tall red brick stone wall. He crashes into the wall like a daredevil driving at full speed into the same wall, only there is not a scratch on the wall, only a bloody, meaty stain, and more and more riders leave such stains. The mountain of minced meat keeps growing and growing, there is no end to it, only the cheerful cries of the carns and the croaking of the ostriches.

  A rge and enchanted training hall, in which a combat mage could be prepared to pass his diploma even now, only all the mannequins - a strange mixture of artifacting, druidism, and something else - are deactivated, and the illuminating amulets are turned off. In the middle of the hall stands a short-haired and very utilitarian-martial-dressed elf with a powerfully developed aura and a battle wand in a special holster, beautiful to the point of catching one's breath. In front of her, there is someone else, a woman too, but she seems to blur, it is impossible to focus on her image, and this someone is expining something to the short-haired combat magician. And she nods, once a second, as if a pendulum, smiling a sincere, slightly ironic smile, continuously and without changing her expression. She nods, nods, nods, and then rolls her eyes, sticking out her tongue and drooling as if she's feeling very good right now, and then takes a normal look, blinking perplexedly, shaking her head, and leaving the room. The second figure disappeared even before the mage stopped rolling her eyes. The magician was already in a hurry, she had a few things to do that she had only just remembered and would soon forget again.

  A nightclub, light music, a bunch of people dancing, and in the middle of it a lonely man in a three-piece suit, looking strangely barely forty and a hundred at the same time, zily sipping a non-alcoholic fruit cocktail. His face has a martyr's "what am I doing here?" look on it, and he's almost ready to leave without waiting for someone he's expecting. But then the expected person appears a young man in gsses, a stylish outfit, and all agitated, and on his hands you can notice traces of badly wiped blood. He almost runs up to the seated man, without even sitting down at the table, breathes in his face, barely audible, but still recognizable: "Architect, let's get the fuck out of here!" But as soon as they stood up and headed for the exit, at least half of those present, including all the guards, stopped abruptly, staring at the departing wax statues with dead eyes. The people who remain moving are perplexed for a moment or even smile, suspecting a fsh mob, but the smiles go away when the dead figures of people who are not people start organizing a massacre.

  Stepan The Fatty's familiar pimply face grinned in a very anticipatory grin as he looked down from an abandoned observation tower at the squad of demoness succubi pying around the ke. Cute and sexy dies, draining blood from the slit throats of their captives and human servants right into the water, throwing themselves a beach party, hanging around the guts and entrails of the sin. The captives, like the cultists, literally throat themselves, and some also cut themselves for one look of cuteness. Stepan Normal's namesake, who doesn't remove his grin, pulls out two shining purple bdes, one long and one shorter, reminiscent of a dagga, and then jumps up sharply, with a telekinetic impulse through his legs destroying the tower, and then soars into the air and falls down, straight into the ke, like a cssic bomb. Only he is burning with purifying fmes and shining with the power of exorcising litanies, which makes it seem that he is going to sanctify all the water in the damn ke. And, judging by the intensity of the holy demon-fighting aura, he may well succeed in his pns.

  Another demoness, also striking passionate and suffocating lust, only this one just lies and lounges in the sun in the middle of some pastoral vilge, where, however, no one pays attention to her. The creature, looking barely out of adolescence, seems to be almost the embodiment of mischievousness and innocence at the same time, which is only aided by a sly grin, small horns, and a wagging thin tail with a cliched heart at the end. Only the woman lying at the feet of the demoness, dressed in a dark cloak of a greenish hue, as well as high boots and nothing else. Staring into the void with a smile of bliss, the woman with the palms and fingers of someone more accustomed to knives and shivs than a handbag and nail file shakes in pleasure as she listens to the demoness's ringing voice. The hell creature completes its monologue, receiving an obedient response from the bandit, sharply pressing her forehead with the toe of her foot, and accompanying it all with a fsh of magic, going straight to the head of the lying. She moaned, wriggled in a will-crushing orgasm, and then, as if nothing had happened, got up and walked away from the vilge without even looking back.

  Suddenly, the demon girl seems to listen to something with her whole being, rexedly leaning on her hands pced slightly behind her back, and then wriggling her body, looking at the side-image of the sleeping shaman with her eyes...

  The dream is repced by a new one. Stepan already sees a group of white-cd Ku Klux Kn fighters, with the ominous "BEZ BAB" written on their chests, climbing up the walls of the women's dormitory, using hooks, cats, and other ninja tricks, trying to sneak into the dorm and read to its inhabitants a pamphlet about how real men don't need any women. In one of the dark windows is a girl in a funny anime headband, but not with cat ears, but devil horns. She suddenly turns sharply to Stepan's point of stay-perception, and he sees that she, looking strangely familiar, not only has a headband with horns but also contact lenses imitating cross-shaped pupils.Без Баб

  Images are repced by images of Kirov battle airships, falling down, hit by jet cans of sour pickles. The great Optimus Prime, disguised as a Zaporozhets, quietly sneaks up behind Commander Shepard riding a pink tricycle, whistling a song to himself. Three suspicious-looking rat folks kick the fourth, telling him, "Darth Krysian, the Gosmosvorvodokanalya is coming for you!" but he just squeaks a cursing. An ice cream man in a multi-colored van fights off zombie kids with a shotgun pounding with enchanted caramel shrapnel, although, wait, one of the kids is not a zombie, but a devil! A cute little devil with weird cross-pupil eyes, and she's not looking at the ice cream man, but behind her back, looking for someone.

  An abandoned tavern by the road, ominous and desote, around which are lying in an assortment of long decayed corpses, which recently were mobile. Some of the corpses are missing pointed fingers. They are being cut down right now quietly swearing some Oleg man with the aura of a weak gifted. What Oleg did to him and where, after all, the ill-fated model, there is no answer, but near the back entrance to the inn, on the other side of the man collecting fingers, suddenly appears a girl with cute horns, a tail, and eyes, eyes in each of which the pupil has the shape of a cross. Stepan knows it for sure, even though she doesn't even look in his direction, looking in the wrong pce, but gradually focuses in the right direction.

  Filled with cigarette smoke, the semi-darkness of some cheap pub, a noir atmosphere, and a mixture of boredom and excitement. Three men sitting at a table pying poker. These three are the Joker pyed by old Ledger, Darth Vader as himself, and the good clown Pennywise. They are pying for the right to get two whole days off, and it seems that they are ready to start killing if the game goes according to a slightly different scenario than they would like. The little devil girl, who had appeared next to the clown, was accosted with an ominous "Shhhh!" and Pennywise, from whom she faltered in apparent terror, handed her a scarlet balloon. The devil looked around, gncing cross-eyed around the smoky and dark room, looking for someone, looking very diligently, but nervous in the presence of the clown. She looked at the balloon as if it were a poisonous viper.

  The eyes

  The eyes

  The eyes

  A dark sleeping room plunged into almost total darkness. The only source of light is a small and flickering candle. Stepan is in the center of the room securely and skillfully tied to a soft armchair. He mooed unhappily and tried to get rid of the rope, which turned out to be enchanted. Not only for its strength and impossibility to untie but also for the comfort of the bound. For some reason his aura doesn't obey, the spiritual call can't be activated, and a couple of shapely blondes, not sisters, but very simir, are pressing him from both sides, rubbing some alchemical stuff on his body dressed in only a rope. And whispering, speaking, asking to look only at the candle, at its light, at its glow, so small, but so warm, as if carrying the warmth of the sun itself. In a moment the shaman stops resisting and then begins to answer questions, with a dreamy smile telling something interesting while one of the blondes jerks the captive's cock, ready to burst out at any second. The second one makes the candle's fme more and more warm and bright, tantalizing and soothing with a wave of her palm. Stepan speaks, listens, agrees, nods, and answers questions, under the approving words, stroking, and touching of the couple, but then his eyes fall on the squinting third girl in this dark room, a pretty bck girl with a scarlet helium balloon in her hands, but her eyes, strange eyes, are blinded by the candle, which has become a small sun, blind and frightening.

  Dream.

  Dream.

  Dream.

  A rge and richly furnished house, a bedroom in which Stepan was sitting in an armchair, and in front of him stood, towering at a good two meters and a third of a rge beast-maiden with cow horns and huge tits the size of Stepan's head, only at her own size breasts seemed surprisingly organic. Taurus, the description of this subspecies of beast races came to his mind. A pureblooded one. The pureblooded Taurus smiles the warm and affectionate smile of a kindly auntie, tilting her back slightly, thrusting out her enormous tits and moving her shoulders. Her breasts oscilte left and right like a hypnotic pendulum, holding his attention and making him hear but not listen, memorize but forget the words, only the words are not those of the Taurus, but of someone else.

  Dreams.

  Dreams.

  Dreams.

  The interior of the same house, but the frame is different. Stepan is not smiling a stupid smile at the huge tits, but is angry and agitated, expressing his thoughts in a very clear way. The woman sitting in the chair and guiltily lowering her head with her strange eyes and pupils nods and agrees with everything he says. That they are bound by someone else's will, but that doesn't mean he will tolerate her antics. That she is bound to obey and do not harm, and her games could very well harm herself if those games become visible to anyone else. That he has already given her a ban on harvesting "crops" and choosing new targets, and she is obligated to obey it. The girl, the maiden, the woman nods sluggishly, smiling slyly with the corner of her mouth, because Stepan says all this while kneeling on his knees, sitting on top of the Tauren lying on the floor, not stopping to furiously blow her between her tits covered with fragrant oil, while the demoness jerks the beast-maiden's nipples with her toes, until the moment when the shaman, roaring with pleasure, did not spill out onto those legs to prove, to show that he is in charge, that he should be listened to, that he is the one who now commands and licks, licks, licks. ..

  Dream.Dream.Dream.

  Images, vistas, ndscapes, scenes, responses, anything imaginable, fused and apart, going in all directions and time streams.

  And eyes.

  Strange eyes with pupils in the shape of a cross, searching, waiting, following from dream to dream, from image to image, searching, trying to see something, someone, finding, almost finding...

  The eyes.

  * * *

  Stepan woke up abruptly, very abruptly, so abruptly, as it happens only if you wake him up by force, which, in fact, happened. No sinister creature with a knife was creeping up on him, no beast of prey was hungry for his blood, and even the leaf-gift was lying peacefully by itself, but not released by the hungry presence of a higher spirit that decided to devour the lost prey. All of this occurred to the young man, from which he summoned a dozen battle spirits, taking cover with them and preparing to defend himself. Only a few seconds ter, he realizes he was awakened by his loyal and contracted dream spirits, who sensed the threat coming through the same dreams. Again freezing and checking himself with specific spiritual techniques the young man exhaled and sat down tiredly on the ground, wiping away the sweat covering him with his shirt sleeve. He was so wet that he would have to clean himself with spirits, and he had slept well, but he was still tired and felt strange as if he had actually run while he slept.

  "I haven't been haunted by evil entities in my dreams yet." His voice sounds confused and hoarse, echoing unpleasantly in the shaman's ears as he recalls all the things that attempting to dream walk can threaten him with. "Let me go, miracle weed, I haven't even smoked you!"

  His attempts to recall his dreams resulted in a series of images that quickly floated away from his memory. His attempts to catch them were frankly too te, and he had not made any prepared dream catchers, he did not see the need. The images remained frankly weak, fragmentary: snow-white stone with red veins, sloppily erased blood on the palms of his hands, a rge ostrich, an enchanted wooden mannequin, a candle burning in the dark, a scarlet balloon, and also.... boobs, big and oiled boobs. Whether it's the ck of communication with the female gender or another interaction with the Autogoddess through the images received through her gifts, they were the ones that were remembered the best. Tits and... eyes. Yes, that's right, the strange and searching gaze of no human eyes with very oddly shaped pupils. Not like a sharingan from one famous anime, no, it was different, like... a cross?

  "Great, I'm having erotic nightmares with Christian themes, just fine." His voice regains its firmness, strength returns to his all-too-rested body. New accomplishments no longer seemed burdensome. "I'm getting farther away from the gods every day. And that's probably a good thing. Especially if from one particur Milfgoddess."

  Shaking himself up, Stepan did some exercises, meditation, and training in working with the spirit, as he had been accustomed to during the wintering in Lyady, having gotten bored with these exertions while sailing on Businka. Yes, there was no sense in hiding it from himself. Even though the young man was frightened and also angry by the unnecessary and very serious risk, but he was even gd that he had returned to solo sailing. Human masses and social interaction, are like good wine. One should be consumed not too often and with pauses. A couple of weeks ter he'll no doubt be grumbling again and thinking how nice it would have been to keep sailing the Dantra and arrive at his destination long ago, but right now, he's not just fine - he's good. After charging and exercises, he began to count the losses mostly in the form of contracts, which now had to be renewed. It was good if several summons were agreed upon at once, but some spirits agreed only to a single use, others charged a high price when the number of summons was multiplied, and others refused to appear a second time at the call of the same shaman.

  Glory in the ages of the system notebook and the memory enhanced by magical attributes, glory indeed! The course of the battle and the list of used summons was restored without difficulty, making him sigh wistfully at the thought of the upcoming work. Not so much because of the work as such, but because of the absence of his favorite clearing, without which the task would become more complicated and tedious, not complicated but tedious. And necessary, obligatory to fulfill! He had other sets of summonses, against the background of which the spent ones, though not a drop in the sea, but not even fifteen percent. Indeed! He had not drafted a single one of the permanent contracts. He just didn't have time. To his own surprise, he managed it before such trump cards came up. This despite the fact they attacked him on their terms, and he had only minimally prepared for defense.

  But most of the summons he'd used in the battle against Eel and his young team had been those most effective on water, underwater, or river waters. Specific entities working hard in the right territory. Given how much Dantra and Mtra dominate the life of an entire region, he has no right not to refresh this part of his arsenal. Simply because this history has a chance to repeat itself on the river. Moreover, it is on the river, around which the rgest cities, the rgest number of vilges, and the entire local economy with commerce are centered, that this situation has the greatest chance of repeating itself. All in all, the arsenal needs to be rebuilt. This became obvious to Stepan, so he began to fulfill the task. Some of the totems, the smallest and most valuable for the campaign he still brought with him. It will be possible to activate and reinstall them to make the work easier.

  Also, a talent point should be invested, although, just with this he can wait: now he does not need talent, especially since the pumping of dialog to the current limit has a chance to turn him off for a couple of days. On the other hand, with the strengthened root skill it will be possible to speed up the recovery of the retinue even more. So many decisions and no saves. Such a disappointment. He wonders if the list of meta-skills has the ability to use this save. Or even spare lives? Somehow it seemed that these fantasies of his had at least a non-zero probability of becoming reality.

  The next thirteen days were very tense and full of bor, for which little by little, little by little experience came, but at the same time so routine that if he decided to write a story about what had happened, there would be nothing to say but the report on the work done would be to the delight of any bureaucrat - thick, heavy, written in small handwriting. He silently rejected one small assignment, and the second, also small, was from the Autogoddess and again reduced everything to masturbation. He had not yet become so wild in these forests. He had retively normal dreams now, because he fell asleep calm and tired and slept next to a couple of catchers taken out of his backpack, and he did not forget to meditate before going to sleep, just for peace of mind.

  The System Store had a very rge amount of currency, which was only slightly reduced by the purchase of reagents for refreshing summons. This made it possible to cautiously consider buying something from the list of special offers. However, the first of the items was a very bck one. It was a bone knife, which should be used to cut the throats of living and breathing victims, preferably intelligent ones. But bypassing the agony of the killed through itself, the artifact so intensified this agony that the specific spirits will caress the owner of the knife, like drug addicts to the dealer. With the same consequences and risks. The sellers of dope become victims of their clients too often, thanks to the criminal chronicles for this information. With such a knife the young man could easily summon and bind even the elder spirits, dark-bck and evil, like an anecdotal mother-in-w, but he had seen such artifacts and summons in the grave. And he didn't have enough currency, even if it was just a little, like the amount of money spent on reagents, but he didn't have enough.

  The second of the items was from Autogoddess and that said it all. However, he was tempted to buy a small and very elegantly made faceless female doll. It is worth only getting a cast of the aura, or better hair or blood of the victim, as it opens simply incredible space for work. Not only vulgar but exactly all sorts of perversions, fetishes, and body modification through this doll could be conducted with maximum ease and through almost any defense. It was a very harsh thing that made his eyes twitch and his butt burns, even though the young man admitted that this artifact, unlike the bracelet, could be used for something useful, not the usual Autogoddess.

  In addition to eying the inaccessible auction items, Stepan worked with his luggage, or rather its volume, which was hard to carry in one person, even with the double of Constitution. And with a spirit pnted in the body or luggage relief is simply uncomfortable. The solution was very simple: one of the backpacks, in which Stepan had stuffed almost all the totems and other heavy things, remained here, on the hill near the stone. A small and reinforced pit, worked by the spirits of the earth, with the backpack with the load inside, and a stone sb created by the spirits on top. Inside this storage chamber was a very funny connection, attached to a second, lightened bag that contained only the most essential things.

  As long as the contract was in effect - that is, at least ten years or until it was canceled - as long as the vault was intact, as long as both bags were intact, he could take out the things and objects from one of the backpacks that were in the other. That's already a cool cim to Artifacting. Stepan was almost certain that the System would finally give him this knowledge, but as, he didn't get it somewhere, gaining only a certain amount of experience. It wasn't bad, of course, but it was still a shame, but at least the problem with luggage was temporarily solved. Still have to, as soon as you settle in a new pce will have to drag everything to the new totem structure, but at the moment the solution is quite working. However, the young man took all three precious artifacts, the usual system artifact and both Autogodess artifacts with him, not taking any chances. It would be foolish and dangerous to leave such magical and dangerous things in a secret pce.

  Another notable one was a quest from the Autogoddess, which appeared at the end of his marathon and apparently out of turn. The young man did not keep track of his quests, but a good memory allowed him to notice that often new quests appeared a day or two earlier or ter and for no apparent reason. It was either a g in the system, or some kind of feature, and the young man was inclined to the tter option. So, the assignment from SuperMilfa! He accepted it and even completed it, as he saw no reason not to. The task was to summon a very powerful strong spirit with a very rare spell specialization, and it had to be summoned with very clear conditions.

  Actually, this assignment - only a small one, not even an average one - attracted Stepan because its description-images, if he decided to transfer it to paper, would take up two A4 pages in painstaking handwriting. To make it shorter, he had to use the spirit to create and process a bnk sheet of parchment for making deals in the trade business. After that, when the victim - necessarily female and beautiful in Stepan's opinion - would sign even the most ordinary contract, committing to, say, the delivery of a chest of alchemical potions, the contract could be amended. You will have to write them on the same contract, and with your own blood with the maximum investment of magical energy in it, and in legible handwriting (this is where the impossible task for Stepan!), as well as finding a pce for this inscription. But if the victim's defense is not paranoid enough, these new additions, which just have to have a vulgar sexual connotation, will become part of the deal.

  The norm.

  It's like, transferring a chest of cosmetic alchemy in such and such a time, get so so many coins of Morgrave coinage in silver, give to the buyer a titjob, and letting yourself be fucked in the pussy and ass, deducting a percentage to the intermediary, close the contract. A completely ordinary transaction, nothing complicated, you don't even have to remember it. In fact, it was a task on a level comparable to that of the Sleepwalker, though simpler. It's easier to notice and defend. Stepan agreed only because there was no need to use the contract in the assignment, nothing forbade the material anchor to be destroyed. Yes, the anchor did not contain the spirit - the spirit only changed the reflection of parchment, paper, or even a cy tablet, but sailed away on its own after the transaction was completed. A very strong and unusual exotic, minimax, like a Bear or Squidward, only in terms of vulgar mindfucking, yes.

  The ritual went so normally and smoothly that the shaman was simply offended. A minimum of necessary offerings, the spirit turned out to be generally unspoiled, not much reserve, very specific images in the dialog, and here, the contract is concluded, and the material contract is already ready. Fulfillment of the quest added a lot of experience, about half the scale, increased affinity with the spheres, increased charm effects, and greatly increased the likelihood of all sorts of vulgar talents in the list of avaible. Oh yes, there was also the promise of a material reward, but there was no hope for it. If it weren't for experience, Stepan wouldn't have bothered.

  The spirit came with the rustling of the pages, which made his eyes dark; it had no clear form, it had no form at all, being just a sound, a rustle, but not something tangible. In the spirit world, the entity looked like a pile of all kinds of scribbled paper, on which one could see obscene pictures or pieces of stories and novels of the "not for children" category. As Stepan realized, the entity was born out of the bitterness of unrecognized fiction writers who wrote explicit scenes in someone else's name, actual ghostwriters bound by an unfair contract, which gave rise to their emotions and resentment - THIS. This spirit could be called a true exotic, very few of Stepan's subordinate entities had a comparable unusual root concept history, and none of them were as strong as this contract-writer.

  Yes, he had burned that contract in the fire, but all the conditions of conscription remained in his memory. It wasn't hard to be conscripted again, nothing could be changed, and that was why he still felt as if he had been fucked. The unpleasant feeling was somewhat soothed by the warmth of the night fire, burning smokeless fmes, - because the smoke was diverted and dispersed by special spirits - cozy and just in case encircled by a powerful magical amulet. The reason for this was not only the mago-erotic contract that had been burned down and had long ago become ashes. It was just that Stepan had finally fulfilled his long-standing dream by burning the Autogoddess's gift, piece by piece. No, he still couldn't bring himself to burn the bracelet and the armored stockings. He was afraid to even touch the first one when he took it out of the box. The second would not even burn in this fire if he threw it into the fmes. This was the third gift from All Milfs. The rgest and most numerous - a natural box of wooden dicks.

  Well, not exactly, the young man exaggerated.

  Not dicks, but wands, and of limited combat and very high quality: exactly fifty artifacts of the same type, each with a very convenient "interface", accessible even to those deprived of the gift, but trained, several modes of fire, built-in protection against interception and detonation. The owner of such a toy wouldn't be able to pull off the trick he'd used to tear Vihras's arm off - he'd run into the defense and get hit back through the magic channel, directly into the aura or, if he had time to react, into the spirit-mediator he'd used to attack.

  Why did Stepan burn these wands, which, by the way, colored the fmes in all the colors of the rainbow, at the same time sending fireworks into the reinforced magic circle that surrounded the campfire? It was not because the engravings on the wooden surface of the wands depicted scenes from a very adult movie. The reason was the typification of the embedded charms. They were, first, non-lethal, which wasn't even a bad thing, and second, in the style of the Autogoddess. This beautiful, delightful, gorgeous, and stunning woman had given him fifty elite combat Orgasmotrons!

  A blow with inserted charms caused an instant and incredibly wild orgasm with the eruption of all possible fluids, as well as the subsequent loss of consciousness, which can be, by repeated activation of the same charms, transferred into a state of complete submission and lethargy, so that the detainee himself in the cell, not otherwise. The ability to hit with separate "arrows of passion", adjusting the power depending on the type of the opponent, his defense, and the nature of that defense, the ability to use invisible and visible only in the magical spectrum "orgasmic sh", hitting the opponent at the touch, with the ability to control the sh, to strengthen or weaken, to adjust the length and intensity, to wrap around shields or even hit through them, if properly adjusted and if you know how to handle amulets at the proper level. A cone attack in front of you, or even a continuous closed field around a specified point - all modes are multifunctional and flexible to the extreme.

  The picture was completed with absolute reliability and a lot of built-in reinsurances so that these wands would not harm either the victims or the owner. Actually, thanks to these re-assurances, which guaranteed gradual deftion of magic in case of mechanical damage, the young man risked burning them, knowing for sure that no big bang would happen. Moreover, he used these wands as donations to various spirits, mostly of a fiery nature, successfully concluding several contracts, even two with strong spirits, not counting the many small ones. And not just fire spirits, there were a handful of healers and suggestors as well. The charms in the wands were a very skillful combination of pure mentalism and very cunning healing with a slight touch of maleficism, burned and sacrificed they gave a lot, and became a valuable reagent.

  He had never been so pleased just to sit by the fire and burn wood! If it weren't for the need to feed the spirits that were begging for a new portion of power and hiding magical emanations, which this fire and fireworks kept within the framework of the hill, without semaphore for tens of kilometers around about the powerful magical duel going on right here, everything would be fine. As, the world had never been and would never be perfect, Stepan would have to put up with it. But he would probably accept it, willingly meeting the blows of fate.

  "Yes, yes, bze, good ones, more power, more valuable magic, I'll also summon the spirits of the fires, it'll be perfect for fighting in urban areas, bze, bze, bze!" He chuckled, rubbing his hands together and probably giving a slightly inadequate impression from the outside. "Burn, burn with fire just as my butt burned, burn to ashes and dust!"

  But it would only seem so, for Stepan was in complete control of himself and showed no unhealthy tendencies in his behavior.

  Yeah, yeah.

  After the contract renegotiation process was completed, he had to invest his talents in spiritual dialog and make a long journey through the wild and dangerous territory. But here, where there are either no people at all or almost none, and magical beasts dangerous for the settlers will hardly threaten the senior shaman, who does not forget about caution, he will be able to breathe a little and calmly get to civilization. Yes, another pancake turned out to be lumpy. The trip on the cruise ship from Bastius and Co. turned out to be too extreme, but this moment was heroically passed and crossed, opening the way for a new path and a new adventure. A maximally boring and safe adventure, which will be diluted only by strenuous, but not dangerous training of his gift.

  Stepan had no doubt - that's the way it would be.

  * * *

  THE STATUS OF STEPAN "NORMAL" AT THE END OF CHAPTER FIFTEENTH

  Name: Stepan

  Level: 22

  Css: Senior Shaman

  Characteristics: (free: 0)

  Talents (free): 1

  Constitution: 2

  Sensitivity: 11

  Power: 6

  Control: 5

  Source: 5

  Spirit: 13

  Resistance: 1

  Knowledge acquired: speaking and writing: Free Cities, academic Neirat, Isnd Kingdom; call practice of master level; master level of spiritual dialog; wilderness hermit; advanced basics of working with healing spirits; advanced developed techniques of casting shamanic charms (GIFT); advanced basic techniques of dream-inducing and dream correction (GIFT); the advanced basic practice of combat calls; advanced basic techniques of interaction with magical sources; advanced basic techniques of countering curses: basic fundamentals of fast call; the advanced basic practice of spiritual operation; the mastery of an experienced martial caller; advanced basics of spiritual haggling and contract agreements with otherworldly entities; the advanced basic practice of remote control of spiritual entities; basic methods of teaching magical sciences; basic methods of tantric practices; advanced basic methods of territorial influences; basics of work with totems; advanced basic techniques of building defensive formations; advanced techniques of spiritual wandering; advanced basic skills of spiritual conflict outside the physical body; advanced developed techniques of suggestive influences based on shamanism (GIFT); methods of undercover work

  Minor knowledge: contract with an elder spirit: Sleepwalker (GIFT); contract with the elder spirits: The Shroud of Touch and the Creator of Decisions (GIFT); a contract with a strong spirit: The Eater of Diseases; defense by distortion of the anteroom of the spheres; contract with a strong spirit: Cheesh'sh'shuya; contract with a strong spirit: Jolly Milker; contract with a strong spirit: Sneaking Glow; contract with a senior spirit: Joy of the Waves; contract with a senior spirit: Vishpli-Schwalstprachtmatt; contract with a senior spirit: Vishpli-Schwalstprachtmatt; contract with a senior spirit: Memory Eater.

  Obtained properties: blessings of health and long life; toughness of spirit; resilience of subtle bodies; small mark of spiritual spheres: spiritual shroud of higher auric concealment (GIFT); flexible transformation of the spiritual body; marking of fallen leaves and bck roots; a tantric spiritual hearth; recognition of creators of passions and weavers of feelings (GIFT); heritage in blood and spirit (GIFT); patchwork spiritual echo (GIFT); multiplicity of spiritual awareness; small spiritual and energetic protection

  System modifiers: peaceful development III; issuance of system assignments III; lecherous development IV; access to system purchases III; small system endowment of characteristics; temporal awareness III; reserve renewal II; replenishment of life I; accepting a systemic deal with a patron (Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney)

  Completed Deals: -

  Avaible Deals: Cute & Innocent; Sweet Attraction; Big & Soft

  Special: Blessing of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney: likely to grant additional talents as you level up; grant specific System quests with increased rewards; Mark of Destinies: Singha, daughter of Maega, and Maega, daughter of Maedra; hidden effects

  * * *

  _RIP_